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N 



THOMAS WTNGFOLD. 






THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE 


By GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D., 

h 

Author of "Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood,” The “Seaboard Parish,” etc. 



PHILADELPHIA 

DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER 

6io South Washington Square 











V 



I 






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p. 




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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Helen Lingard r 

II. Thomas Wingfold 8 

III. The Diners 14 

IV. Their Talk 20 

V. A staggering Question., 27 

VI. The Curate in the Churchyard . 34 

VII. The Cousins 40 

VIII. The Garden 47 

IX. The Park 53 

X. The Dwarfs 59 

XI. The Curate at Home 66 

XII. An Incident 74 

XHI. A Report of Progress 79 

XIV. Jeremy Taylor 83 

XV. The Park Gate 87 

XVI. The Attic 92 

XVII .?ojwarth’s Plan ’. 

XVHI. Joseph Polwcr.h 106 

XIX. The Conclusion of the whole Matter 117 

XX. A Strange Sermon 122 

XXI. A Thunderbolt 130 


IV 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIL Leopold 136 

XXIII. The Refuge 142 

XXIV. Helen with a Secret 151 

XXV. A Daylight Visit 156 

XXVI. Leopold’s Story 162 

XXVII. Leopold’s Story concluded 167 

XXVIII. Sisterhood 175 

XXIX. The Sick-Chamber 180 

XXX. The Curate’s Progress 187 

XXXI. The Curate makes a Discovery 193 

XXXII. Hopes 201 

XXXIII. The Ri^e 206 

XXXIV. Rachel and her Uncle 215 

XXXV. A Dream 220 

XXXVI. Another Sermon 229 

XXXVII. Nursing 235 

XXXVIII. Glaston and the Curate 242 

XXXIX. The Linen-Draper 248 

XL. Rachel 260 

XLI. The Butterfly 270 

XLII. The Commonplace 273 

XLIII. Home again 281 

XLIV. The Sheath 285 

XLV. Invitation I 292 

XLVI. A Sermon to Helen 296 

XLVII. A Sermon to Himself 304 

XLVIII. Criticism 308 

XLIX. A vanishing Glimmer 315 

L. Let us Pray 320 

LI. Two Letters 325 

LII. Advice in the Dark 328 

LIII. Intercession 33^ 


CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER PAGE 

LIV. Helen alone 337 

LV. A Haunted Soul 342 

LVI. Compelled Confidence 348 

LVII. Willing Confidence 356 

LVIII. The Curate’s Counsel 360 

LIX. Sleep 366 

LX. Divine Service 372 

LXI. A Shop in Heaven 381 

LX 1 1. Polwarth and Lingard 392 

LX III. The strong Man 405 

LXIV. George and Leopold 412 

LXV. Wingfold and Helen 417 

LXVI. A Review 425 

LXVII. A Sermon to Leopold 43° 

LXVIIL After the Sermon 443 

LXIX. Bascombe and the Magistrate 450 

LXX. The Confession 456 

LXXI. The Mask 462 

LXXII. Further Decision 4^8 

LXXIII. The Curate and the Doctor 473 

LXXIV. Helen and the Curate 481 

LXXV. An Examination 488 

LXXVI. Immortality 492 

LXXVIL Passages from the Autobiography of the 

Wandering Jew 500 

LXXVIIL The Wandering Jew 5^4 

LXXIX. Do. 515 

LXXX. Remarks 527 

LXXXI. Struggles 53i 

LXXXII. The Lawn 538 

LXXXIII. How Jesus spoke to Women 549 

LXXXIV. Deliverance 557 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

LXXXV. The Meadow 562 

LXXXVI. Rachel and Leopold 575 

LXXXVII. The Blood-hound 581 

LXXXVIII. The Blood-hound traversed 587 . 

LXXXIX. The Bedside 598 

XC. The Garden 608 

XCI. The Departure 612 

XCII. The Sunset 618 

XCIII. An honest Spy 626 

XCIV. What Helen heard 631 

XCV. What Helen heard more.... 637 

XCVL The Curate’s Resolve 645 

XCVII. Helen awake 653 

XCVUI. Thou didst rot leave.. ... . 660 


THOMAS .WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


CHAPTER I. 

HELEN LINGARD. 

SWIFT gray November wind had taken 
every chimney of the house for an organ- 
pipe, and was roaring in them all at once, 
quelling the more distant and varied 
noises of the woods, which moaned and surged like a 
sea. Helen Lingard had not been out all day. The 
morning, indeed, had been fine, but she had been writ- 
ing a long letter to her brother Leopold at Cambridge, 
and had put off her walk in the neighboring park till 
after luncheon, and in the meantime the wind had risen, 
and brought with it a haze that threatened rain. She 
was in admirable health, had never had a day’s illness 
in her life, was hardly more afraid of getting wet than a 
young farmer, and enjoyed wind, especially when she 



A 


2 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


was on horseback. Yet as she stood looking from her 
window, across a balcony where shivered more than one 
autumnal plant that ought to have been removed a 
week ago, out upon the old-fashioned garden and mea- 
' dows beyond, where each lonely tree bowed with drift- 
ing garments — I was going to say like a suppliant, but 
it was away from its storming enemy — she did not 
feel inclined to go out. That she was healthy was no 
reason why she should be unimpressible, any more 
than that good temper should be a reason for 
indifterence to the behavior of one’s friend. She 
always felt happier in a new dress, when it was 
made to her mind and fitted her body ; and when 
the sun shone she was lighter-hearted than when it 
rained : I had written merrier, but Helen was seldom 
merry, and had she been made aware of the fact and 
questioned why, would have answered — Because she so 
seldom saw reason. She was what all her friends called 
a sensible girl ; but, as I say, that was no reason why 
she should be an insensible girl as well, and be subject 
to none of the influences of the weather. She did feel 
those influences, and therefore it was that she turned 
away from the window with the sense, rather than the 
conviction, that the fireside in her own room was rcn* 
dered even more attractive by the unfriendly aspect of 
things outside and the roar in the chimney, which hap- 
pily was not accompanied by a change in the current of 
the smoke. 

The hours between luncheon and tea are confessedly 
dull, but dullness is not inimical to a certain kind of 


HELEN LINGARD. 


3 


comfort, and Helen liked to be that way comfortable. 
Nor had she everyet been aware of self-rebuke because 
of the liking. Let us see what kind and degree of com- 
fort she had in the course of an hour and a half attained. 
And in discovering this, I shall be able to present her 
to my reader with a little more circumstance. 

She sat before the fire in a rather masculine posture. 
I would not willingly be rude, but the fact remains — a 
posture in which she would not, I think, have sat for 
her photograph — leaning back in a chintz-covered easy- 
chair, all the lines of direction about her parallel with 
the lines of the chair, her arms lying on its arms, and 
the fingers of each hand folded down over the end of 
each arm — square, straight, right-angled— gazing into 
the fire, with something of the look of a sage, but one 
who has made no discovery. 

She had just finished the novel of the day, and was 
suffering a mild reaction — the milder, perhaps, that she 
was not altogether satisfied with the consummation. 
For the heroine had, after much sorrow and patient en- 
durance, at length married a man whom she could not 
help knowing to be not worth having. For the author 
even knew it, only such was his reading of life, and such 
his theory of artistic duty, that what it was a disappoint- 
ment to Helen to peruse, it seemed to have been a com- 
fort to him to write. Indeed her dissatisfaction went 
so far, that, although the fire kept burning away in per- 
fect content before her, enhanced by the bellowing 
complaint of the wind in the chimney, she yet came 
nearer thinking than she had ever been in her life 


4 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Now thinking, especially to one who tries it for the first 
time, is seldom or never a quite comfortable operation, 
and hence Helen was very near becoming actually un- 
comfortable. She was even on the borders of making the 
unpleasant discovery that the business of life — and that 
not only for north-pole expeditions, African explorers, 
pyramid-inspectors, and such like, but for every man 
and woman born into the blindness of the planet, is to 
discover — after which discovery there is little more 
comfort tq be had of the sort with which Helen was 
chiefly conversant. But she escaped for the time after 
a very simple and primitive fashion, although it was in- 
deed a narrow escape. 

Let me not be misunderstood, however, and supposed' 
to imply that Helen was dull in faculty, or that she con- 
tributed nothing to the bubbling of the intellectual pool 
in the social gatherings at Glaston. Far from it. When 
I say that she came near thinking, I say more for her 
than any but the few who know what thinking is will 
understand, for that which chiefly distinguishes man 
from those he calls the lower animals is the faculty he 
most rarely exercises. True, Helen supposed she could 
think — like other people, because the thoughts of other 
people had passed through her in tolerable plenty, 
leaving many a phantom conclusion behind ; but this 
Was their thinking, not hers. She had thought no more 
than was necessary now and then to the persuasion that 
she saw what a sentence meant, after which her accep- 
tance or rejection of what was contained in it, never 
more than lukewarm, depended solely upon its relation 


HELEN LINGARD. 


5 


to what she had somehow or other, she could seldom 
have told how, come to regard as the proper style of 
opinion to hold upon things in general. 

The social matrix which up to this time had minis- 
tered to her development, had some relations with May- 
fair, it is true, but scanty ones indeed with the universe ; 
so that her present condition was like that of the com- 
mon bees, every one of which Nature fits for a queen, 
but its nurses prevent from growing one by providing 
for it a cell too narrow for the unrolling of royalty, and 
supplying it with food not potent enough for the nur- 
ture of the ideal — with this difference, however, that 
the cramped and stinted thing comes out, if no queen, 
then a working bee, and Helen, who might be both, was 
neither yet. If I were at liberty to mention the books 
on her table, it would give a few of my readers no small 
help towards the settling of her position in the “valued 
file” of the young women of her generation ; but there 
are reasons against it. 

She was the daughter of an officer, who, her mother 
dying when she was born, committed her to the care of 
a widowed aunt, and almost immediately left for India, 
where he rose to high rank, and somehow or other 
amassed a considerable fortune, partly through his mar- 
riage with a Hindoo lady, by whom he had one child, a 
boy some three years younger than Helen. When he 
died, he left his fortune equally divided between the 
two children. 

Helen was now three-and-twenty, and her own mis- 
tress. Her appearance suggested Norwegian blood, for 


6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


she was tall, blue-eyed, and dark-haired — but fair- 
skinned, with regular features, and an over still — some 
who did not like her said hard — expression of counte- 
nance. No one had ever called her Nelly ; yet she had 
long remained a girl, lingering on the broken border- 
land after several of her school companions had become 
young matrons. Her drawing master, a man of some 
observation and insight, used to say MissLingard would 
wake up somewhere about forty. 

The cause of her so nearly touching the borders of 
thought this afternoon, was — that she became suddenly 
aware of feeling bored. Now Helen was even seldomer 
bored than merry, and this time she saw no reason for 
it, neither had any person to lay the blame upon. She 
might have said it was the weather, but the weather had 
never done it before. Nor could it be want of society, 
for George Bascombe was to dine with them. So was 
the curate, but he did not count for much. Neither v as 
she weary of herself. That, indeed, might be only a 
question of time, for the most complete egotist, Julius 
Caesar, or Napoleon Buonaparte, must at length get 
weary of his paltr)'- self ; but Helen, from the slow rate 
of her expansion,was not old enough yet. Nor was she 
in any special sense wrapt up in herself : it was only 
that she had never yet broken the shell which continues 
to shut in so many human-chickens, long after they 
imagine themselves citizens of the real world. 

Being somewhat bored then, and dimly aware that 
to be bored was to be out of harmony with some- 
thing or other, Helen was on the verge of thinking. 


HELEN LINGARD. 


7 


but, as I have said, escaped the snare in a very direct and 
simple fashion : she went fast asleep, and never woke 
till her maid brought her the cup of kitchen-tea from 
which the inmates of some houses derive the strength 
to prepare for dinner. 


CHAPTER II. 


THOMAS WINGFOLD. 

HE morning, whose afternoon was thus stor- 
my, had been fine, and the curate went out 
for a walk. Had it been just as stormy, 
however, he would have gone all the same. 
Not that he was a great walker, or indeed fond of exer- 
cise of any sort, and his walking, as an Irishman might 
sa5^ was half-sitting — on stiles and stones and fallen trees. 
He was not in bad health, he was not lazy, or given to 
self-preservation, but he had little impulse to activity of 
any sort. The springs in his well of life did not seem 
to flow quite fast enough. 

He strolled through Osterfield park, and down the 
deop descent to the river, where, chilly as it was, he 
seated himself upon a large stone on the bank, and 
knew that he was there, and that he had to answer to 
Thomas Wingfold ; but why he was there, and why he 



THOMAS WINGFOLD. 


9 


was not called something else, he did not know. On 
each side of the stream rose a steeply sloping bank, on 
which grew many fern-bushes, now half-withered, and 
the sunlight upon them, this November morning, 
seemed as cold as the wind that blew about their golden 
and green fronds. Over a rocky bottom the stream 
went — talking rather than singing — down the valley to- 
wards the town, where it seemed to linger a moment to 
embrace the old abbey church, before it set out on its 
leisurely slide through the low level to the sea. Its talk 
was chilly, and its ripples, which came half from the ob- 
structions in its channel below, and half from the wind 
that ruffled it above, were not smiles, but wrinkles ra- 
ther — even in the sunshine. Thomas felt cold himself, 
but the cold was of the sort that comes from the look 
rather than the feel of things. He did not, however, 
much care how he felt — not enough certainly to have 
made him put on a great coat: he was not deeply inte- 
rested in himself. With his stick, a very ordinary bit of 
oak, he kept knocking pebbles into the water, and list- 
lessly watching them splash. The wind blew, the sun 
shone, the water ran, the ferns waved, the clouds went 
drifting over his head — but he never looked up, or took 
any notice of the doings of Mother Nature at her 
housework : everything seemed to him to be doing only 
what it had got to do, because it had got it to do, and 
not because it cared about it, or had any end in doing it. 
For he, like every other man, could read nature only by 
his own lamp, and this was very much how he had 
hitherto responded to the demands made upon him. 


lo THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


His life had not been a very interesting one, although 
early passages in it had been painful. He had done 
fairly well at Oxford : it had been expected of him, and 
he had answered expectation ; he had not distinguished 
himself, nor cared to do so. He had known from the 
first that he was intended for the church, and had not 
objected, but received it as his destiny — had even, in 
dim obedience, kept before his mental vision the neces- 
sity of yielding to the heights and hollows of the mould 
into which he was being thrust. But he had taken no 
great interest in the matter. 

The church was to him an ancient institution of such 
approved respectability that it was able to communicate 
it, possessing emoluments, and requiring observances. 
He had entered her service ; she was his mistress, and 
in return for the narrow shelter, humble fare, and not 
quite too shabby garments she allotted him, he would 
perform her bests — in the spirit of a servant who abid- 
eth not in the house forever. He was now six-and- 
twenty years of age, and had never dreamed of mar- 
riage, or even been troubled with a thought of its unat- 
tainable remoteness. He did not philosophise much 
upon life, or his position in it, taking everything with a 
cold, hopeless kind of acceptance, and laying no claim 
to courage, devotion, or even bare suffering. He 
had a certain dull prejudice in favor of honesty, 
would not have told the shadow of a lie to be made 
archbishop of Canterbury, and yet was so uninstructed 
in the things that constitute practical honesty that some 
of his opinions would have considerably astonished St. 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, 


II 


Paul. He liked reading the prayers, for the making of 
them vocal in church was pleasant to him, and he 
had a not unmusical voice. He visited the sick — with 
some repugnance it is true, but without delay, and 
spoke to them such religious commonplaces as occurred 
to him, depending mainly on the prayers belonging to 
their condition for the right performance of his office. 
He never thought about being a gentleman, but always 
behaved like one. 

I suspect that at this time there lay somewhere in his 
mind, keeping generally well out of sight however, that 
is, below the skin of his consciousness, the unacknow- 
ledged feeling that he had been hardly dealt with. Bat 
at no time even when it rose plainest, would he have 
dared to add — by Providence. Had the temptation come, 
he would have banished it and the feeling together. 

He did not read much, browsed over his newspaper at 
breakfast with a polite curiosity, sufficient to season the 
loneliness of his slice of fried bacon, and took more inte- 
rest in some of the naval intelligence than in any thing 
else. Indeed it would have been difficult tor himself even 
to say in what he did take a large interest. When leisure 
awoke a question as to how he should employ it, he 
would generally take up his Horace and read aloud one 
of his more mournful odes — with such attention to the 
rhythm, I must add, as, although plentiful enough 
among scholars in respect of the dead letter, is rarely 
found with them in respect of the living vocal utterance. 

Nor had he now sat long upon his stone, heedless of 
the world’s preparation for winter, before he began re- 


12 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


peating to himself the poet’s ^Equam memento rebus in 
arduis, which he had been trying much, but with small 
success, to reproduce in similar English cadences, 
moved thereto in part by the success of Tennyson in 
his O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies — a thing as 
yet alone in the language, so far as I know. It was per- 
haps a little strange that the curate should draw the 
strength of which he was most conscious from the 
pages of a poet whose hereafter was chiefly serviceable 
to him — in virtue of its unsubstantiality and poverty, 
the dreamlike thinness of its reality — in enhancing the 
pleasures of the world of sun and air, cooling shade and 
songful streams, the world of wine and jest, of forms 
that melted more slowly from encircling arms, and eyes 
that did not so swiftly fade and vanish in the distance. 
Yet when one reflects but fora moment on ihe poverty- 
stricken expectations of Christians from their hereafter, 
I cease to wonder at Wingfold ; for human sympathy is 
lovely and pleasant, and if a Christian priest and a 
pagan poet feel much in the same tone concerning the 
affairs of the universe, why should they not comfort 
each other by sitting down together in the dust } 

“No hair it boots thee whether from Inachus 
Ancient descended, or, of the poorest born, 

Thy being drags, all bare and roofless — 

Victim the same to the heartless Orcus. 

All are on one road driven ; for each of us 
The urn is.tossed, and, later or earlier. 

The lot will drop and all be sentenced 
Into the boat of eternal exile.” 


THOMAS WINGFOLD. 


13 


Having thus far succeeded with these two stanzas, 
Wingfold rose, a little pleased with himself, and climbed 
the bank above him, wading through mingled sun and 
wind and ferns — so careless of their shivering beauty 
and their coming exile that a watcher might have said 
the prospect of one day leaving behind him the shows 
of this upper world could have no part in the curate’s 
sympathy with Horace. 


CHAPTER' III. 


THE DINERS. 

RS. RAMSHORN, Helen’s aunt, was past the 
middle age ot woman ; had been handsome 
and pleasing ; had long ceased to be either ; 
had but sparingly recognized the fact, 
yet had recognized it, and felt aggrieved. Hence in 
part it was that her mouth had gathered that peevish 
and wronged expression which tends to produce a 
moral nausea in the beholder. If she had but known ^ 
how much uglier in the eyes of her own fellow-mortals 
her own discontent had made her, than the severest 
operation of the laws of mortal decay could have done, 
she might have* tried to think less of her wrongs and 
more of her privileges. As it was, her own face wronged 
her own heart, which was still womanly, and capable 
of much pity — seldom exercised. Her husband had 
been dean of Halystone, a man of sufficient weight of 
character to have the right influence in the formation 
of his wife’s. He had left her tolerably comfortable as 
to circumstances, but childless. She loved Helen, 
whose even imperturbability had by mere weight, as it 



THE DINERS. 


15 


might seem, gained such a power over her that she was 
really mistress in the house without either of them 
knowing it. 

Naturally desirous of keeping Helen’s fortune in the 
family, and having, as I say, no son of her own, she had 
yet not far to look to find a cousin capable, as she might 
well imagine, of renderine himself acceptable to the 
heiress. He was the son of her younger sister, married, 
like herself, to a dignitary of the church, a canon of a 
northern cathedral. This youth, therefore, George 
Bascombe by name, whose visible calling at present was 
to eat his way to the bar, she often invited to Glas- 
ton ; and on this Friday afternoon he was on his way 
from London to spend the Saturday and Sunday with 
the two ladies. The cousins liked each other, had not 
had more of each other’s society than was favorable to 
their aunt’s designs, who was far too prudent to have 
made as yet any reference to them, and stood altogether 
in as suitable a relative position for falling in love with 
each other as Mrs. Ramshorn could well' have desired. 
Her chief, almost her only, uneasiness arose from the 
important and but too evident fact that Helen Lingard 
was not a girl of the sort to fall readily in love. That, 
however, was of no consequence, provided it did not 
come in the way of her marrying her cousin, who, her 
aunt felt confident, was better fitted to rouse her dor- 
mant affections than any other youth she had ever seen 
or was ever likely to see. Upon this occasion she had 
asked Thomas Wingfold to meet him, partly with the 
design that he should act as a foil to her nephew, partly 


i6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


in order to do her duty by the church, to which she felt 
herself belong not as a lay member, but in some unde- 
fined professional capacity, in virtue of her departed 
dean. Wingfold had but lately come to the parish, and, 
as he was merely curate, she had not been in haste to 
invite him. On the other hand, he was the only clergy- 
man officiating in the abbey church, which was grand 
and old, with a miserable living and a non-resident rec- 
tor. He, to do him justice, paid nearly the amount of 
the tithes in salary to his curate, and spent the rest on 
the church material, of which, for certain reasons, he 
retained the incumbency, the presentation to which be- 
longed to his own family. 

The curate presented himself at the dinner-hour in 
Mrs. Ramshorn’s drawing-room, looking like any other 
gentleman, satisfied with his share in the administration 
of things, and affecting nothing of the professional either 
in dress, manner, or tone. Helen saw him for the first 
time in private life, and, as she had expected, saw noth- 
ing remarkable — a man who looked about thirty, was a 
little over the middle height, and well enough con- 
structed as men go, had a good forehead, a questionable 
nose, clear gray eyes, long, mobile, sensitive mouth, 
large chin, pale complexion, and straight black hair, and 
might hav e been a lawyer just as well as a clergyman. A 
keener— that is, a more interested — eye than hers might 
have discovered traces of suffering in the forms of the 
wrinkles which, as he talked, would now and then flit 
like ripples over his forehead ; but Helen's eyes seldom 
did more than slip over the faces presented to her ; and 


THE DINERS. 


17 


had it been otherwise, who could be expected to pay 
much regard to Thomas Wingfold when George Bas^ 
combe was present ? There, indeed, stood a man by the 
corner of the mantel-piece ! — tall and handsome as an 
Apollo and strong as the young Hercules, dressed in 
the top of the plainest fashion, self-satisfied, but not 
offensively so, good-natured, ready to smile, as clean in 
conscience, apparently, and as large in sympathy, as his 
shirt-front. Everybody who knew him counted George 
Bascombe a genuine good fellow, and George himself 
knew little to the contrary, while Helen knew nothing. 

One who had only chanced to get a glimpse of her in 
her own room, as in imagination my reader has done, 
would hardly have recognized her again in the drawing- 
room. For in her own room she was but as she ap- 
peared to herself in her mirror — dull, inanimate ; but in 
the drawing-room her reflection from living eyes and 
presences served to stir up what waking life was in her. 
When she spoke, her face dawned with a clear, although 
not warm light ; and although it must be owned that 
when it was at rest, the same over-stillness, amounting 
almost to dulness, the same seeming immobility, ruled 
as before, yet, even when she was not speaking, the rest 
was often broken by a smile — a genuine one, for al- 
though there was much that was stiff, there was nothing 
artificial about Helen. Neither was there much of the 
artificial about her cousin ; for his good-nature and his 
smile, and whatever else appeared upon him, were all 
genuine enough— the only thing in this respect not 
quite satisfactory to the morally fastidious man being 


i8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


his tone in speaking. Whether he had caught it at the 
university, or amongst his father’s clerical friends, or 
in the professional society he now frequented, I can 
not tell, but it had been manufactured somewhere — after 
a large, scrolly kind of pattern, sounding well-bred and 
dignified. I wonder how many speak with the voices 
that really belong to them. 

Plainly, to judge from the one Bascombe used, he was 
accustomed to lay down the law, but in gentlemanly 
fashion, and not as if he cared a bit about the thing in 
question himself. By the side of his easy carriage, his 
broad chest, and towering Greek-shaped head, Thomas 
Wingfold dwindled almost to vanishing — in a word, 
looked nobody. And besides his inferiority in size and 
self-presentment, he had a slight hesitation of manner, 
which seemed to anticipate, if not to court, the subordi- 
nate position which most men, and most women too, 
were ready to assign him. He said, Don't you 
think ?" far oftener than “ / think," and was always more 
ready to fix his attention upon the strong points of an 
opponent’s argument than to reassert his own in 
slightly altered phrase like most men, or even in fresh 
forms like a few ; hence — self-assertion, either mo.destly 
worn like a shirt of fine chain-armor, or gaunt and ob- 
trusive like plates of steel, being the strength of the 
ordinary man — what could the curate appear but de- 
fenceless, therefore weak, and therefore contemptible ? 
The truth is, he had less self-conceit than a mortal’s 
usual share, and was not yet possessed of any opinions 


THE DINERS. 


19 


interesting enough to himself to seem worth defending 
with any approach to vivacity. 

Bascombe and he bowed in response to their intro- 
duction with proper indifference, after a moment’s so- 
lemn pause exchanged a sentence or two which resem- 
bled an exercise in the proper use of a foreign language, 
and then gave what attention Englishmen are capable 
of before dinner to the two ladies — the elder of whom, I 
may just mention, was dressed in black velvet with 
heavy Venetian lace, and the younger in black silk with 
old Honiton. Neither of them did much towards enliv- 
ening the conversation. Mrs. Ramshorn, whose dinner 
had as yet gained in interest with her years, sat peevish- 
ly longing for its arrival, but cast every now and then a 
look of mild satisfaction upon her nephew, which, how- 
ever, while it made her eyes sweeter, did not much alter 
the expression of her mouth. Helen fancied she im- 
proved the arrangement of a few greenhouse flowers in 
an ugly vase on the table. 

At length the butler appeared, the curate took Mrs. 
Ramshorn, and the cousins followed — making, in the 
judgment of the butler as he stood in the hall and the 
housekeeper as she peered from the baize-covered door 
that led to the still-room, as handsome a couple as mor- 
tal eyes need wish to see. They looked nearly of an 
age, the lady the more stately, the gentleman the more 
graceful, or, perhaps rather, elegant, of the two. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THEIR TALK. 

URING dinner Bascombe had the talk mostly 
to himsek, and rattled well, occasionally re- 
buked by his aunt for some remark which 
might to a clergyman appear objectiona- 
ble ; nor as a partisan was she altogether satisfied 
with the curate that he did not seem inclined to take 
clerical exception. He ate his dinner, quietly respond- 
ing to Bascombe’s sallies — which had usually more of 
vivacity than keenness, more of good spirits than wit — 
with a curious flickering smile or a single word of 
agreement. It might have seemed that he was humor- 
ing a younger man, but the truth was the curate had not 
yet seen cause for opposing him. 

How any friend could have come to send Helen 
poetry I can not imagine, but that very morning she 
had received by post a small volume of verse, which, 
although just out, and by an unknown author, had al- 
ready been talked of in what are called literary circles. 
Wingfold had read some extracts from the book that 
same morning, and was therefore not quite unprepared 




THEIR TALK. 


21 


when Helen asked him if he had seen it. He suggested 
that the poems, if the few lines he had seen made a fair 
sample, were rather of the wailful order. 

“ If there is one thing I despise more than another,” 
said Bascombe, “ it is to hear a man, a fellow with legs 
and arms, pour out his griefs into the bosom of that 
most discreet of confidantes. Societv. bewailing his hard 
fate, and calling upon youths ana maidens to fill their 
watering-pots with tears, and with him water the sor- 
rowful pansies and undying rue of the race. I believe I 
am quoting.” 

“ I think you must be, George,” said Helen. “ I 
never knew you venture so near the edge of poetry be- 
fore.” 

“ Ah, that is all you know of me. Miss Lingard !” re- 
turned Bascombe. “ — And then,” he resumed, turning 
again to Wingfold, “ what is it they complain of ? That 
some girl preferred a better man, perhaps, or that a 
penny paper once told the truth about their poetry.” 

“ Or it may be only that it is their humor to be sad,” 
said Wingfold. “ But don’t you think,” he continued, 
“ it is hardly worth while to be indignant with them ? 
Their verses are a relief to them, and do nobody any 
harm.” 

“ They do all the boys and girls harm that read them, 
and themselves who write them more harm than any 
body, confirming them in tearful habits, and teaching 
eyes unused to weep. I quote again, I believe, but from 
whom I am innocent. — If I ever had a grief, I should 
have along with it the decency to keep it to myself.” 


22 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ I don’t doubt you would, George,” said his cousin, 
who seemed more playfully inclined than usual. “ But,"' 
she added, with a smile, “ would your silence be volun- 
tary or enforced ?” 

“What!” returned Bascombe, “you think I could 
not plain my woes to the moon ? Why not I as well as 
another? I could roar you as ’twere any nightingale,” 

“ You have had your sorrows, then, George ?” 

“ Never any thing worse yet than a tailor’s bill, Helen, 
and I hope you won’t provide me with any. I am not 
in love with decay. — I remember a fellow at Trinity, the 
merriest of all our set at a wine-party, who, alone with 
his ink-pot, was for ever enacting the part of the un- 
heeded poet, complaining of the hard hearts and tune- 
less ears of his generation. I went into his room once, 
and found him with the tears running down his face, a 
pot of stout half empty on the table, and his den all but 
opaque with tobacco-smoke, reciting with sobs — I had 
repeated the lines so often before they ceased to amuse 
me that I can never forget them — 

‘ Heard’st thou a quiver and clang? 

In thy sleep did it make thee start ? 

’Twas a chord in twain that sprang — 

But the lyre-shell was my heart.’ 

He took a pull at the stout, laid his head on the table, 
and sobbed like a locomotive.” 

“ But it’s not very bad — not bad at all, so far as 1 see,” 
said Helen, who had a woman’s weakness for the side 
attacked, in addition to a human partiality for fair play. 


THEIR TALK. 


23 


“ No, not bad at all — for absolute nonsense,” said Bas- 
combe. 

“ He had been reading Heine,” said Wingfold. 

“ And burlesquing him,” returned Bascombe. " Fancy 
hearing one of the fellow’s heart-strings crack, and tak- 
ing it for a string of his fiddle in the press. By the 
way, what are the heart-strings ? Have they any ana- 
tomical synonym ? But I have no doubt it was good 
poetry.” 

“ Do you think poetry and common sense necessarily 
opposed to each other ?” asked Wingfold. 

“ I confess a leaning to that opinion,” replied Bas- 
combe, with a half-conscious smile. 

“What, do you say of Horace, now.?” suggested 
Wingfold. 

“ Unfortunately for me, you have mentioned the one 
poet for whom I have any respect. But what I like in 
him is just his common sense. He never cries over 
spilt milk, even if the jug be broken to the bargain. 
But common sense would be just as good in prose as in 
verse.” 

“ Possibly ; but what we have of it in Horace would 
never have reached us but for the forms into which he 
' has cast it. How much more enticing acorns in the cup 
are ! — I was watching two children picking them up to- 
day.” 

“ That may be ; there have always been more children 
than grown men,” returned Bascombe. “ For my part, 
I would sweep away all illusions, and get at the heart of 
the affair.” 


24 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ But,” said Wingfold, with the look of one who, as 
he tries to say it, is seeing a thing for the first time, 
“ does not the acorn-cup belong to the acorn ? May 
not some of what you call illusions be the finer, or at 
least more ethereal, qualities of the thing itself You 
do not object to music in church, for instance.^” 

Bascombe was on the point of saying that he objected 
to it nowhere except in church, but for his aunt's sake, 
or rather for his own sake in his aunt’s eyes, he re- 
strained himself, and uttered his feelings only in a pe- 
culiar smile, of import so mingled that its meaning was 
illegible ere it had quivered along his lip and vanished. 

“ I am no metaphysician,” he said, and Wingfold ac- 
cepted the dismissal of the subject. _ 

Little passed between the two men over their wine ; 
and as neither of them cared to drink more than a cou- 
ple of glasses, they soon rejoined the ladies in the 
drawing-room. 

Mrs. Ramshorn was taking her usual forty winks in 
her arm-chair, and their entrance did not disturb her. 
Helen was turning over some music. 

“ I am looking for a song for you, George,” she said. 
“ I want Mr. Wingfold to hear you sing, lest he should 
take you for a man of stone and lime.” 

“ Never mind looking,” returned her cousin. “ I w.ll 
sing one you have never heard.” 

And seating himself at the piano, he sang the follow- 
ing verses. They were his own, a fact he would proba- 
bly have allowed to creep out had they met with more 
sympathy. His voice was a fine bass one, full of tone. 


THEIR TALK. 


25 


“ Each man has his lampful, his lampful of oil ; 

He may dull its glimmer with sorrow and toil ; 

He may leave it unlit, and let it dry, 

Or wave it aloft, and hold it high ; 

For mine, it shall burn with a fearless flame 
In the front of the darkness that has no name- 

“ Sunshine and Wind ! — are ye there ? Ho ! ho ! 

Are ye comrades or lords, as ye shine and blow? 

I care not, I ! I will lift my head 

Till ye shine and blow on my grassy bed. 

See, brother Sun, I am shining too ! , 

Wind, I am living as well as you ! 

“ Though the sun go out like a vagrant spark. 

And his daughter planets are left in the dark, 

I care not, I ! For why should I care ? 

I shall be hurtless, nor here nor there. 

Sun and Wind, let us shine and shout, 

For the day draws nigh when we all go out !” 

“ I don’t like the song,” said Helen, wrinkling her 
brows a little. “ It sounds — well, heathenish.” 

She would, I fear, have said nothing of the sort, being 
used to that kind of sound from her cousin, had not a 
clergyman been present. Yet she said it from no hy- 
pocrisy, but simple regard for his professional feelings. 

“ I sang it for Mr. Wingfold,” returned Bascombe. 
“ It would have been a song after Horace’s own heart.” 

“ Don’t you think,” rejoined the curate, “ the defiant 
tone of your song would have been strange to him ? I 
confess that what I find chiefly attractive in Horace is his 
sad submission to the inevitable.” 

“ Sad ?” echoed Bascombe, 

“ Don’t you think so ?” 


26 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ No. He makes the best of it, and as merrily as 
he can.” 

“ As he can, I grant you,” said Wingfold. 

Here Mrs. Ramshorn woke, and the subject wa^ 
dropped, leaving Mr. Wingfold in some perplexity as to 
this young man and his talk, and what the phenomenon 
signified. Was heathenism after all secretly cherished, 
and about to become lashionab.e in English society 
He saw little of its phases, and for what he knew it 
might be so. 

Helen sat down at the piano. Her time was perfect, 
and she never blundered a note. She played well and 
woodenly, and had for her reward a certain wooden 
satisfaction in her own performance. The music she 
chose was good of its kind, but had more to do with the 
instrument than the feelings, and was more dependent 
upon execution than expression. Bascombe yawned 
behind his handkerchief, and Wingfold gazed at the 
profile of the player, wondering how, with such fine 
features and complexion, with such a fine-shaped and 
well-set head, her face should be so far short of inter* 
esting. It seemed a face that had no story. 


CHAPTER V. 


A STAGGERING QUESTION. 

was time the curate should take his leave, 
Bascombe would go out with him and have 
his last cigar. The wind had fallen, and the 
moon was shining. A vague sense of con- 
trast came over Wingfold, and as he stepped on 
the pavement from the threshold of the high gates 
of wrought iron, he turned involuntarily and looked 
back at the house. It was of red brick, and flat-faced, in 
the style of Queen Anne’s time, so that the light could 
do nothing with it in the way of shadow, and dwelt only 
on the dignity of its unpretentiousness. But aloft over 
its ridge the moon floated in the softest, loveliest blue, 
with just a cloud here and there to show how blue it 
was, and a sparkle where its blueness took fire in a star. 
It was autumn, almost winter, below, and the creepers 
that clung to the house waved in the now gentle wind 
like the straggling tresses of old age ; but above was a 
sky that might have overhung the last melting of spring 
into summer. At the end of the street rose the great 
square tower of the church, seeming larger than in the 



28 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


daylight. There was something in it all that made the 
curate feel there ought to be more — as if the night 
knew something he did not ; and he yielded himself to 
its invasion. 

His companion having carefully lighted his cigar all 
round its extreme periphery, took it from his mouth, 
regarded its glowing end with a smile of satisfaction, 
and burst into a laugh. It was r.ot a scornful laugh, 
neither was it a merry or a humorous laugh : it was 
one o-f satisfaction and amusement. 

“ Let me have a share in the fun,” said the curate. 

“You have it,” said his companion — rudely, indeed, 
but not quite offensively, and put his cigar in his mouth 
again. 

Wingfold was not one to take umbrage easily. He 
was not important enough in his own eyes for that, but 
he did not choose to go farther. 

“That’s a fine old church,” he said, pointing to the 
dark mass invading the blue — so solid, yet so clear in 
outline. 

“ I am glad the mason-work is to your mind,” return- 
ed Bascombe, almost compassionately. “ It must be 
some satisfaction, perhaps consolation, to you.” 

Before he had thus concluded the sentence a little 
scorn had crept into his tone. 

“You make some allusion which I do not quite appre- 
hend,” said the curate. 

“ Now, I am going to be honest with you,” said Bas- 
combe abruptly, and stopping, he turned square towards 
his companion, and took the full-flavored Havana 


A STAGGERING QUESTION. 


29 


from his lips. “ I like you,” he went on, “ for you seem 
reasonable ; and besides, a man ought to speak out what 
he thinks. So here goes ! Tell me honestly — do you 
believe one word of all that ?” 

And he in his turn pointed in the direction of the 
great tower. 

The curate was taken by surprise, and made no an- 
swer : it was as if he had received a sudden blow in the 
face. Recovering himself presently, however, he 
sought room to pass the question without direct en- 
counter. 

“ How came the thing there ?'* he said, once more 
indicating the church-tower. 

“ By faith, no doubt,” answered Bascombe, laughing, 
” — but not your faith ; no, nor the faith of any of the 
last few generations.” 

' “ There are more churches built now, ten times over, 
than in any former period of our history.” 

“ True ; but of what sort ? All imitation — never an 

i 

original amongst them all !” 

“ If they had found out the right way, why change 

it r 

“ Good ! But it is rather ominous for the claim of a 
divine origin to your religion that it should be the only 
thing that in these days takes the crab's move — back- 
wards. You are indebted to your forefathers for your 
would-be belief, as well as for their genuine churches. 
You hardly know what your belief is. There is my aunt 
— as good a specimen as I know of what you call a 
Christian ! — so accustomed is she to think and speak 


30 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


too after the forms of what you heard my cousin call 
heathenism, that she never would have discovered, had 
she been as wide awake as she was sound asleep, that 
the song I sung was anything but a good Christian 
ballad.” 

“ Pardon me ; I think you are wrong there.” 

“What! did you never remark how these Christian 
people, who profess to believe that their great- man has 
conquered death, and all that rubbish — did you never 
observe the way they look if the least allusion is made 
to death, or the eternity they say they expect beyond 
it ? Do they not stare as if you had committed a breach 
of manners.'* Religion itself the same way : as much as 
you like about the church, but don’t mention Christ ! 
At the same time, to do them justice, it is only of death 
in the abstract they decline to hear ; they will listen to the 
news of the death of a great and good man without any 
such emotion. Look at the poetry of death — I mean the 
way Christian poets write of it ! A dreamless sleep they 
call it — the bourne from whence, etc. — an endless sepa- 
ration — the night that knows no morning — the sleep 
that knows no waking. “ She is gone forever !” cries 
the mother over her daughter. And that is why such 
things are not to be mentioned, because in their hearts 
they have no hope, and in their minds no courage to 
face the facts of existence. We haven’t the pluck of 
the old fellows, who, that they might look Death himself 
in the face without dismay, accustomed themselves, 
even at their banquets, to the sight of his most loath- 
some handiwork, his most significant symbol — and en- 


A STAGGERING QUESTION. 


31 


joyed their wine the better for it ! — your friend Horace, 
for instance.” 

“ But your aunt now would never consent to such an 
interpretation of her opinions. Nor do I allow that it 
is fair.” 

“ My dear sir, if there is one thing I pride myself 
upon, it is fair play, and I grant you at once she would 
not. But I am speaking, not of creeds, but of beliefs. 
And I assert that the forms of common Christian speech 
regarding death come nearer those of Horace than your 
saint, the old Jew, Saul of Tarsus.” 

It did not occur to Wingfold that people generally 
speak from the surfaces, not the depths, of their minds, 
even when those depths are moved ; nor yet that possi- 
bly Mrs. Rarnshorn was not the best type of a Christian, 
even in his soft-walking congregation. In fact, nothing 
came into his mind with which to meet what Bascombe 
said — the real force whereof he could not help feeling — • 
and he answered nothing. His companion followed his 
apparent yielding with fresh pressure. 

“ In truth,” he said, “ I do not believe that j'ou believe 
more than an atom here and there of what you profess. 
I am confident you have more good sense by a great 
deal.” 

“ I am sorry to find that you place good sense above 
good faith, Mr. Bascombe ; but I am obliged by your 
good opinion, which, as I read it, amounts to this — that 
I am one of the greatest humbugs you have the misfor- 
tune to be acquainted with.” 

“ Ha ! ha ! ha ! No, no ; I don’t say that. I know so 


32 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


well how to make allowance for the prejudices a man 
has inherited from foolish ancestors, and which have 
been instilled into him, as well, with his earliest nour- 
ishment, both bodily and mentally. But —come now — I 
do love open dealing — I am myself open as the day — did 
you not take to the church as a profession, in which you 
might eat a piece of bread — as somebody says in your 
own blessed Bible — dry enough bread it may be, for the 
old lady is not over-generous to her younger children — 
still a gentlemanly sort of livelihood ?” 

Wingfold held his peace. It was incontestably with 
such a view that he had signed the articles and sought 
holy orders, — and that without a single question as to 
truth or reality in either act. 

“ Your silence is honesty, Mr. Wingfold, and I honor 
you for it,” said Bascombe. “ It is an easy thing for a 
man in another profession to speak his mind, but silence 
such as yours, casting a shadow backward over your 
past, requires courage : I honor you, sir.” 

As he spoke, he laid his hand on Wingfold’s shoulder 
with the grasp of an atnJete. 

“ Can the sherry have any thing to do with it ?” 
thought the curate. The fellow was, or seemed to be, 
years younger than himself ! It was an assurance un- 
imaginable — yet there it stood — six feet of it good ! He 
glanced at the church-tower. It had not vanished in 
mist ! It still made its own strong, clear mark on the 
eternal blue ! 

“ I must not allow you to mistake my silence, Mr. 
Bascombe,” he answered the same moment. “ It is not 


A STAGGERING QUESTION. 


33 


easy to reply to such demands all at once. It is not 
easy to say in times like these, andata mcyment’s notice, 
what or how much a man believes. But whatever my 
answer might be had I time to consider it, my silence 
must at least not be interpreted to mean that I do not be- 
lieve as my profession indicates. That, at all events, 
would be untrue.” 

“Then I am to understand, Mr. Wingfold, that you 
neither believe nor disbelieve the tenets of the church 
whose bread you eat ?” said Bascombe, with the air of a 
reprover of sin. 

“ I decline to place myself between the horns of any 
such dilemma,” returned Wingfold, who was now more 
than a little annoyed at his persistency in forcing his 
way within the precincts of another’s personality. 

“ It is but one more proof — more than was necessary 
— to convince me that the whole system is a lie — a lie of 
the worst sort, seeing it may prevail even to the self- 
deception of a man otherwise remarkable for honesty 
and directness. Good-night, Mr. Wingfold.” 

With lifted hats, but no hand-shaking, the men parted. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE CURATE IN THE CHURCHYARD. 

ASCOMBE was chagrined to find that the per- 
suasive eloquence with which he hoped soon 
to play upon the convictions of jurymen at 
his own sweet will had not begotten even 
communicativeness, not to say confidence, in the 
mind of a parson who knew himself fooled, and partly 
that it gave him cause to douht how far it might 
be safe to urge his attack in another and to him more 
important quarter. He had a passion for convincing 
people, this Hercules of the new world. He sauntered 
slowly back to his aunt’s, husbanding his cigar a little, 
and looking up at the moon now and then, — not to ad- 
mire the marvel of her shining, but to think yet again 
what a fit type of an effete superstition she was, in that 
she retained her power of fascination even in death. 

Wingfold walked slowly away, with his eyes on the 
ground gliding from under his footsteps. It was only 
eleven oclock, but this the oldest part of the town 
seemed already asleep. They had not met a single per- 
son on their way, and hardly seen a lighted window. 



THE CURATE IN THE CHURCHYARD. 


35 


But he felt unwilling to go home, which at first he was 
fain to attribute to his having drunk a little more wine 
than was good for him, whence this feverishness and 
restlessness so strange to his experience. In the 
churchyard, on the other side of which his lodging lay, 
he turned aside from the flagged path and sat down 
upon a gravestone, where he was hardly seated ere he 
began to discover that it was something else than the 
wine which had made him feel so uncomfortable. What 
an objectionable young fellow that Bascombe was ! — pre- 
suming and arrogant to a degree rare, he hoped, even in 
a profession for which insolence was a qualification. 
What rendered it worse was that his good-nature — and 
indeed every one of his gilts, which were all of the po- 
pular order — was subservient to an assumption not only 
self-satisfied but obtrusive ! And yet — and yet — the ob- 
jectionable character of his self-constituted judge being 
clear as the moon to the mind of the curate, was 
there not something in what he had said ? This much 
remained undeniable at least, that when the very exist- 
ence of the church was denounced as a humbug in the 
hearing of one who ate her bread, and was her pledged 
servant, his very honesty had kept that man from 
speaking a word in her behalf ! Something must be 
wrong somewhere : was it in him or in the church } In 
him assuredly, whether in her or not. For had he not 
been unable to utter the simple assertion that he did 
believe the things which, as the mouth-piece of the 
church, he had been speaking in the name of the truth 
every Sunday — would again speak the day after to-mor- 


36 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


row ? And now the point was — could he not say he 
believed them ? He had never consciously questioned 
them ; he did not question them now ; and yet, when a 
forward, overbearing young infidel of a lawyer put it to 
him —plump — as if he were in the witness-box, or rather 
indeed in the dock — did he believe a word of what the^ 
church had set him to teach ? — a strange something— 
was it honesty ? — if so, how dishonest had he not 
hitherto been ! — was it diffidence ? — if so, how presump- 
tuous his position in that church ! — this nondescript 
something seemed to raise a “viewless obstruction” in 
his throat, and, having thus rendered him the first mo- 
ment incapable of speaking out like a man, had taught 
him the next— had it ? — ^to quibble— “ like a priest,” the 
lawyer-fellow would doubtless have said ! He must go 
home and study Paley— or perhaps Butler’s Analogy — 
he owed the church something, and ought to be able to 
strike a blow for her. Or would not Leighton be bet- 
ter? Or a more modern writer— say Neander, or Cole- 
ridge, or perhaps Dr. Liddon ? There were thousands 
able to fit him out for the silencing of such foolish men 
as this Bascombe of the shirt-front ! 

Wingfold found himself filled with contempt, but the 
next moment was not sure whether this Bascombe or 
one Wingfold were the more legitimate object of it. 
One thing was undeniable— his friends had put him into 
the priest’s office, and he had yielded to go that he 
might eat a piece of bread. He had no love for it 
except by fits, when the beauty of an anthem, or the 
composition of a collect, awoke in him a taint consent- 


THE CURATE IN THE CHURCHYARD. 


37 


ing admiration or a weak responsive sympathy. Did 
he not, indeed, sometimes despise himself, and that 
pretty heartily, for earning his bread by work which any 
pious old woman could do better than he ? True, he 
attended to his duties ; not merely “ did church,” but 
his endeavor also that all things should be done de- 
cently and in order. All the same it remained a fact 
that if Barrister Bascombe were to stand up and assert 
in full congregation — -as no doubt he was perfectly pre- 
pared to do — that there was no God anywhere in the 
universe, the Rev. Thomas Wingfold could not, on the 
church’s part, prove to anybody that there was ; — dared 
not, indeed, so certain would he be of discomfiture, ad- 
vance a single argument on his side of the question. 
Was it even his side of the question ? Could he say 
he believed there was a God } Or was not this 
all he knew — that there was a Church • of England, 
which paid him for reading public prayers to a God in 
whom the congregation — and himself — were supposed 
by some to believe, by others, Bascombe, for instance, 
not } 

These reflections were not pleasant, especially with 
Sunday so near. For what if there were hundreds, yes 
thousands of books, triumphantly settling every ques- 
tion which an over-seething and ill-instructed brain 
might by any chance suggest, — what could it boot 1 — 
how was a poor finite mortal, with much the ordinary 
faculty and capacity, and but a very small stock already 
stored, to set about reading, studying, understanding, 


38 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


mastering, appropriating the contents of those thou- 
sands of volumes necessary to the arming of him who, 
without pretending himself the mighty champion to 
seek the dragon in his den, might yet hope not to let 
the loathly worm swallow him, armor and all, at one 
gulp in the highway? Add to this that — thought of all 
most dismayful ! — he had himself to convince first, the 
worst dragon of all to kill, for bare honesty’s sake, in 
his own field ; while, all the time he was arming and 
fighting — like the waves of the flowing tide in a sou’- 
wester, Sunday came in upon Sunday, roaring on his 
flat, defenceless shore, Sunday behind Sunday rose tow- 
ering in awful perspective, away to the verge of an infi- 
nite horizon — Sunday after Sunday of dishonesty and 
sham— yes, hypocrisy, far worse than any idolatry. To 
begin now, and in such circumstances, to study the evi- 
dences of Christianity, were about as reasonable as to 
send a man, whose children were crying for their dinner, 
oft to China to make his fortune ! 

He laughed the idea to scorn, discovered that a grave- 
stone in a November midnight was a cold chair for 
study, rose, stretched himself disconsolately, almost de- 
spairingly, looked long at the persistent solidity of the 
dark church and the waving line of its age-slackened 
ridge, which, like a mountain range, shot up suddenly 
in the tower and ceased — then turning away left the 
houses of the dead crowded all about the house of the 
resurrection. At the farther gate he turned yet again, 
and gazed another moment on the tower. Towards the 


THE CURATE IN THE CHURCHYARD. 


39 


sky it towered, and led his gaze upward. There still 
soared, yet rested, the same quiet night with its delicate 
heaps of transparent blue, its cool-glowing moon, its 
steely stars, and its something he did not understand. 
He went home a little quieter of heart, as if he had 
heard from afar something sweet and strange. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE COUSINS. 

EORGE BASCOMBE was a peculiar develop- 
ment of the present century, almost of the 
present generation. In the last century, be- 
yond a doubt, the description of such a 
man would have been incredible. 1 do not mean that 
he was the worse or the better for that. There are 
types both of good and of evil which to the past would 
have been incredible because unintelligible. 

It is very hard sometimes for a tolerably honest man, 
as we have just seen in the case of Wingfold, to say 
what he believes, and it ought to be yet harder to say 
what another man does not believe ; therefore I shall 
presume no further concerning Bascombein this respect 
than to say that the thing he see7ned most to believe was 
that he had a mission to destroy the beliefs of every 
body else. Whence he derived this mission he would 
not have thought a reasonable question — would have 
answered that if any man knew any truth unknown to 
another, understood any truth better, or could present 
it more clearly than another, the truth itself was his 



THE COUSINS. 


41 


commission oi apostleship. And his stand was indubi- 
tably a firm one. Only there was the question — whe- 
ther his presumed commission was verily truth or no. 
It must be allowed that a good deal turns upon that. 

According to the judgment of some men who thought 
they knew him, Bascombe was as yet, I will not say in- 
capable of distinguishing, but careless of the distinction 
between — not a fact and a law, pernaps, but a law and a 
truth. They said also that he inveighed against the be- 
liefs of other people, without having ever seen more 
than a distorted shadow of those beliefs — some of them 
he was not capable of seeing, they said-only capable of 
denying. Now while he would have been perfectly jus- 
tified, they said, in asserting that he saw no truth in the 
things he denied, was he justifiable in concluding that 
his not seeing a thing was a proof of its non-existence 
— any thing more, in fact, than a presumption against its 
existence ? or in denouncing every man who said he 
believed this or that which Bascombe did not believe, 
as either a knave or a fool if not both in one ? He would, 
they said, judge any body — a Shakespeare, a Bacon, 
a Milton, without a moment’s hesitation or a quiver of 
reverence— judge men who beside him were as the liv- 
ing ocean to a rose-diamond. If he was armed in hon- 
esty, the rivets were of self-satisfaction. The suit, they 
allowed, was adamantine, unpierceable. 

That region of a man’s nature which has to do with 
the unknown was in Bascombe shut off by a wall with- 
out chink or cranny ; he was unaware of its existence. 
He had come out of the darkness, and was going 


42 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


back into the darkness ; all that lay between, plain 
and clear, he had to do with — nothing more. He 
could not present to himself the idea of a man who 
found it impossible to live without some dealings with 
the supernal. To him a man’s imagination was of no 
higher calling than to amuse him with its vagaries. He 
did not know, apparently, that Imagination had been 
the guide to all the physical discoveries which he wor- 
shipped, therefore could not reason that perhaps she 
might be able to carry a glimmering light even into the 
forest of the supersensible. 

How far he was original in the views he propounded 
will, to those who understand the times of which I 
write, be plain enough. The lively reception of another 
man’s doctrine, especially if it comes over water or 
across a few ages of semi-oblivion, and has to be 
gathered with occasional help from a dictionar)^ raises 
many a man, in his own esteem, to the same rank with 
its first propounder ; after which he will propound it so 
heartily himself as to forget the difference, and love it 
as his own child. 

It may seem strange that the son of a clergyman 
should take such a part in the world’s affairs, but one 
who observes will discover that, at college at least, the 
behavior of sons of clergymen resembles in general as 
little as that of any, and less than that of most, the be- 
havior enjoined by the doctrines their fathers have to 
teach. The cause of this is matter for the consideration 
of those fathers. In Bascombe’s case it must be men- 
tioned, also, that instead of taking freedom from preju- 


THE COUSINS. 


43 


dice as a portion of the natural accomplishment of a 
gentleman, he prided himself upon it, and therefore 
would often go dead against the things presumed to be 
held by the cloth, long before he had begun to take his 
position as an iconoclast. 

Lest I should, however, tire my reader with the de^ 
lineation of a character not of the most interesting, I 
shall, for the present, only add that Bascombe had per- 
suaded himself, and without much difficulty, that he was 
one of the prophets of a new order of things. At Cam- 
bridge he had been so regarded by a few who had laud- 
ed him as a mighty foe to humbug — and in some true 
measure he deserved the praise. Since then he had 
found a larger circle, and had even radiated of his light, 
such as it was, from the centres of London editorial 
offices. But all I have to do with now is the fact that 
he had grown desirous to add his cousin, Helen Lingard, 
to the number of those who believed Ln him, and over 
whom, therefore, he exercised a prophet’s influence. 

No doubt it added much to the attractiveness of the 
intellectual game that the hunt was on the home 
grounds of such a proprietress as Helen — a handsome, 
a gifted, and, above all, a lady-like young woman. To 
do Bascombe justice, the fact that she was an heiress 
also had very little weight in the matter. If he had 
ever had any thought of marrying her, that thought was 
not consciously present to him when first he became 
aware of his wish to convert her to his views of life. 
But although he was not in love with her, he admired 


44 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


her, and believed he saw in her one that resembled 
himself. 

As to Helen, although she was no more conscious of 
cause of self-dissatisfaction than her cousin, she was 
not therefore positively self-satisfied like him. For 
that her mind was not active enough. 

If it seem, as it may, to some of my readers, difficult 
to believe that she should have come to her years with- 
out encountering any questions, giving life to any aspi- 
rations, or even forming any opinions that could rightly 
be called her own, I would remind them that she had al- 
ways had good health, and that her intellectual faculties 
had been kept in full and healthy exercise, nor had once 
afforded the suspicion of a tendency towards artistic ut- 
terance in any direction. She was no mere dabbler in 
any thing : in music, for instance, she had studied tho- 
rough bass, and studied it well ; yet her playing was 
such as I have, already described it. She understood 
perspective, and could copy an etching in pen and ink 
to a hair’s breadth, yet her drawing was hard and me- 
chanical. She was pretty much at home in Euclid, and 
thoroughly enjoyed a geometric relation, but had never 
yet shown her English master the slightest pleasure in an 
analogy, or the smallest sympathy with any poetry 
higher than such as very properly delights schoolboys. 
Ten thousand things she knew without wondering at 
one of them. Any attempt to rouse her admiration 
she invariably received with quiet intelligence but no 
response. Yet her drawing-master was convinced there 
lay a large soul asleep somewhere below the calm gray 


THE COUSINS. 


45 


morning of that wide-awake yet reposeful intelligence. 
As far as she knew — only she had never thought any 
thing about it — she was in harmony with creation ani- 
mate and inanimate, and for what might or might 
not be above creation, or at the back, or the heart, or 
the mere root of it, how could she think about a some- 
thing the idea of which had never yet been presented to 
her by love or philosophy or even curiosity? As for 
any influence from the public offices of religion, a con- 
tented soul may glide through them all for a long life, 
unstruck to the last, buoyant and evasive as a bee 
amongst hailstones. And now her cousin, unsolicited, 
was about to assume, if she should permit him, the un- 
spiritual direction of her being, so that she need never 
be troubled from the quarter of the unknown. 

Mrs. Ramshorn’s house had formerly been the manor- 
house, and, although it now stood in an old street, with 
only a few yards of ground between it and the road, it 
had a large and ancient garden behind it. A large gar- 
den of any sort is valuable, but an ancient garden is in- 
valuable, and this one had retained a very antique love- 
liness. The quaint memorials of its history lived on 
into the new, changed, unsympathetic time, and stood 
there, aged, modest, and unabashed. Yet not one 
of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its 
old-fashionedness ; its preservation was owing merely 
to the fact that theirgardener was blessed with awhole- 
some stupidity rendering him incapable of unlearning 
what his father, who had been gardener there before 
him, had had marvellous difficulty in teaching him. 


46 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


We do not half appreciate the benefits to the race that 
spring from honest dulness. The clever people are the 
ruin of every thing. 

Into this garden Bascombe ^yalk;ed the next morning, 
after breakfast, and Helen, who, next to the smell of a 
fir-wood fire, honestly liked the odor of a good cigar, 
spying him from her balcony, which was the roof of the 
veranda, where she was trimming the few remaining 
chrysanthemums that stood outside the window of her 
room, ran down the little wooden stair that led from it 
to the garden, and joined him. Nothing could just at 
present have been more to his mind. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE GARDEN. 

KE a cigar, Helen ?” said George. 

“ No, thank you,” answered Helen; “I 
like it diluted.” 

“ I don’t see why ladies should not have 
things strong as well as men.” 

“Not if they don’t want them. You can’t enjoy 
every thing — I mean, one can’t have the strong and the 
delicate both at once. I don’t believe a smoker can 
have the same pleasure in smelling a rose that I have.” 

“ Isn’t it a pity we never can compare sensations 

“ I don’t think it matters much ; every one would 
have to keep to his own after all.” 

“ That’s good, Helen ! If ever man try to humbug 
you, he will find he has lost his stirrups. If only there 
were enough like you left in this miserable old hulk of 
a creation !” 

It was an odd thing that when in the humor of find- 
ing fault, Bascombe would not unfrequently speak of 
the cosmos as a creation. He was himself unaware of 
the curious fact. . 




I 


48 THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ You seem to have a standing quarrel with the crea- 
tion, George ! Yet one might think you had as little 
ground as most people to complain of your portion in 
it,” said Helen. 

“ Well, you know, I don’t complain for myself. I 
don’t pretend to think I am specially ill used. But I am 
not every body. And then there’s such a lot of born 
fools in it !” 

“ If they are born fools they can’t help it.” 

“ That may be ; only it makes it none the pleasanter 
for other people ; but, unfortunately, they are not the 
only or the worst sort of fools. For one born fool 
there are a thousand wilful ones. For one man that 
will honestly face an honest argument, there are ten 
thousand that will dishonestly shirk it. There’s that 
curate-fellow now — Wingfold I think aunt called him — 
look at him now !” 

“ I can’t see much in him to rouse indignation,” said 
Helen. “ He seems a very inoffensive man.” 

“ I don’t call it inoffensive when a man sells himself 
to the keeping up of a system that — ” 

Here Bascombe checked himself, remembering that a 
sudden attack upon what was at least, the more was the 
pity, a time-honored system might rouse a woman’s 
prejudices ; and as Helen had already listened to a large 
amount of undermining remark without perceiving the 
direction of his tunnels, he resolved, before venturing 
an open assault, to make sure that those prejudices 
stood, lightly borne, over an abyss of seething objec- 
tion. He had had his experiences as the prophet-pio- 


THE GARDEN. 


49 


T 


neer of glad tidings to the nations, and had before now, 
although such weakness he could not anticipate in 
Helen, seen one whom he considered a most promising 
pupil turn suddenly away in a storm of terror and dis- 
gust. 

“ What a folly is it now,” he instantly resumed, leaving 
the general and attacking a particular, “ to think to make 
people good by promises and threats — promises of a 
heaven that would bore the dullest among them to 
death, and threats of a hell the very idea of which, if 
only half conceived, would be enough to paralyze every 
nerve of healthy action in the human system !” 

“ All nations have believed in a future slate, either of 
reward or punishment,” objected Helen. 

“ Mere Brocken-spectres of their own approbation or 
disapprobation of themselves. And whither has it 
brought the race ?” 

“ What then would you substitute for it, George ?” 

“ Why substitute anything? Ought not men to be 
good to one another because they are made up of ones 
and others ? Do you or I need threats and promises to 
make us kind ?” And what right have we to judge others 
worse than ourselves ? Mutual compassion,” he went 
on, blowing out a mouthful of smoke and then swelling 
his big chest with a huge lungsful of air, “ might be 
sufficient to teach poor ephemerals kindness and con- 
sideration enough to last their time.” 

“ But how would you bring such reflections to bear?” 
asked Helen, pertinently. 

I would reason thus : You must consider that you 


50 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


are but a part of the whole, and that whatever you do 
to hurt the whole, or injure any of its parts, will return 
upon you who form one of those parts.” 

“ How would that influence the man whose favorite 
amusement is to beat his wife ?” 

“ Not at all, I grant you. But that man is what he is 
from being born and bred under a false and brutal system. 
Having deluged his delicate brain with the poisonous 
fumes of adulterated liquor, and so roused all the ter- 
rors of a phantom-haunted imagination, he sees hostile 
powers above watching for his fall, and fiery ruin be- 
neath gaping to receive him, and in pure despair acts 
like the madman the priests and the publicans have 
made him. Helen,” continued Bascombe with solem- 
nity, regarding her fixedly, “ to deliver the race from 
the horrors of such falsehoods, which by no means ope- 
rate only on the vulgar and brutal, for to how many of 
the most refined and dehcate of human beings are not 
their lives rendered bitter by the evil suggestions of 
lying systems— I care not what they are called — philo- 
sophy, religion, society, I care not ! — to deliver men, I 
say, from such ghouls of the human brain, were indeed 
to have lived ! and in the consciousness of having spent 
his life in the slaying of such dragons, a man may well 
go from the nameless past into the nameless future re- 
joicing, careless even if his poor length of days be 
shortened by his labors to leave blessing behind him, 
and, full of courage even in the moment of final dis- 
solution, cast her mockery back into the face of 


THE GARDEN. 


51 


mocking Life, and die her enemy and the friend of 
Death !” 

George’s language was a little confused. Perhaps he 
mingled his ideas a little for Helen’s sake— or rather 
for obscurity’s sake. Anyhow, the mournful touch in 
it was not his own, but taken from the poems of certain 
persons whose opinions resembled his, but floated on 
the surface of mighty and sad hearts. Tall, stately, 
comfortable Helen walked composedly by his side, soft, 
ly shared his cigar, and thought what a splendid plead- 
er he would make. Perhaps to her it sounded rather 
finer than it was, for its tone of unselfishness, the aroma 
of self-devotion that floated about it, pleased and attract- 
ed her. Was not here a youth in the prime of being and 
the dawn of success, handsome, and smoking the oldest 
of Havanas, who, so far from being enamoured of his 
own existence, was anxious and careful about that of 
less-favored mortals, for whose welfare indeed he was 
willing to sacrifice his life } — nothing less could be what 
he meant. And how fine he looked as he said it, with 
his head erect and his nostrils quivering like those of 
a horse ! For his honesty, that was self-evident ! 

Perhaps, had she been capable of looking into it, the 
self-evident honesty might have resolved itself into this 
— that he thoroughly believed in himself ; that he meant 
what he said ; and that he offered her nothing he did 
not prize and cleave to as his own. 

To one who had read Darwin, and had chanced to see 
them as they walked in their steady, stately young life 
among the ancient cedars and clipped yews of the gar- 


52 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


den, with the rags and tatters of the ruined summer 
hanging over and around them, they must have looked 
as fine an instance of natural selection as the world had 
to show. And now in truth for the first time, with any 
shadow of purpose, that is, did the thought of Helen as 
a wife occur to Bascombe. She listened so well, was so 
ready to take what he presented to her, was evidently 
so willing to become a pupil, that he began to say to 
himself that here was the very woman made — no, not 
made, that implied a maker — but for him, without the 
made ; that is, if ever he should bring himself by mar- 
riage to limit the freedom to which man, the crown of 
the world, the blossom of nature, the cauliflower of the 
spine, was predestined or doomed, without will in him- 
self or beyond himself, from an eternity of unthinking 
matter, ever producing what was better than itself, in 
the prolific darkness of non-intent. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE PARK. 

the bottom of Mrs. Ramshorn’s garden was 
a deep' sunk fence, which allowed a large 
meadow, a fragment of what had once 
been the manor-park, to belong, so far as 
the eyQ was concerned, to the garden. Nor was 
this all, for in the sunk fence was a door with a little 
tunnel, by which they could pass at once from the gar. 
den to the meadow. So, the day being wonderfully fine, 
Bascombe proposed to his cousin a walk in the park, the 
close-paling of which, with a small door in it, whereto 
Mrs. Ramshorn had the privilege of a key, was visible 
on the other side of the meadow. The two keys had 
but to be fetched from the house, and in a few minutes 
they were in the park. The turf was dry, the air was 
still, and although the woods were very silent, and 
looked mournfully bare, the grass drew nearer to the 
roots of the trees, and the sunshine filled them with 
streaks of gold, blending lovelily with the bright green 
of the moss that patched the older stems. Neither 
horses nor dogs say to themselves, I suppose, that the 




54 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


sunshine makes them glad, yet both are happier, after 
the rules of equine and canine existence, on a bright day : 
neither Helen nor George could have understood a 
poem of Keats — not to say Wordsworth — (I do not 
mean they would not have fancied they did) — and yet the 
soul of nature that dwelt in these common shows did not 
altogether fail of influence upon them. 

“ I wonder what the birds do with themselves all the 
winter,” said Helen. 

“ Eat berries, and make the best of it,” answered 
George. 

“ I mean what becomes of them all. We see so few of 
them.” 

“ About as many as you see in summer. Because you 
hear them you fancy you see them.” 

“ But there is so little to hide them in winter.” 

“ Little is wanted to hide our dusky creatures.” 

“ They must have a hard time of it in frost and snow.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” returned George. “ They enjoy 
life on the whole, I believe. It aint such a very bad 
sort of a world as some people would have it. Nature 
is cruel enough in some of her arrangements, it can’t be 
denied. She don’t scruple to carry out her plans. It is 
nothing to her that for the life of one great monster of 
a high-priest millions upon millions of submissive little 
fishes should be sacrificed ; and then if any body come 
within the teeth of her machinery, don’t she mangle 
him finely — with her fevers and her agues and her 
convulsions and consumptions and what not } But 
still, barring her own necessities, and the consequences 


THE PARK. 


55 


of man’s ignorance and foolhardiness, she is on the 
whole rather a good-natured old worhan, and scatters a 
deal of tolerably fair enjoyment around her.” 

“ One would think the birds must be happy in summer 
at least, to hear them sing,” corroborated Helen, 

“ Yes, or to see them stripping a hawthorn bush in 
winter — always provided the cat or the hawk don’t get 
a hold of them. With that nature does not trouble her- 
self. Well, it’s soon over — with all of us, and that’s a 
comfort. If men would only get rid of their cats and 
hawks — such as the fancy, for instance, that all their suf- 
fering comes of the will of a malignant power ! That is 
the kind of thing that makes the misery of the world !” 

“ I don’t quite see — ” began Helen. 

“ We were talking about the birds in winter,” inter- 
rupted George, careful not to swell too suddenly any of 
the air-bags with which he would float Helen’s belief. 
He knew wisely, and he knew how, to leave a hint to 
work while it was yet not half understood. By the time 
it was understood it would have grown a little familiar: 
the supposed pup when it turned out a cub would not 
be so terrible as if it had presented itself at once as 
leonate. 

And so they wandered across the park, talking easily. 

“They’ve got on a good way since I was here last,” 
said George, as they came in sight of the new house 
the new earl was building. “But they don’t seem much 
in a hurry with it either.” 

“ Aunt says it is twenty years since the foundations 
were laid by the uncle of the-present earl,” said Helen; 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


5 ^^ 


“and then for some reason or other the thing was 
dropped.” 

“ Was there no house on the place before 

“ Oh ! yes — not much of a house, though.” 

“And they pulled it down, I suppose.” 

“ No ; it stands there still.” 

“ Where 

“ Down in the hollow there — over those trees — about 
the worst place they could have built in. Surely you 
have seen it ! Poldie and I used to run all over it.” 

“ No, I never saw it. Was it empty then 

“ Yes, or almost. I can remember some little atten- 
tion paid to the garden, but none to the house. It is 
just falling slowly to pieces. Would you like to see it 

“ That I should,” returned Bascombe, who was always 
ready for any new impression on his sensorium, and 
away they went to look at the old house of Glaston, as it 
was called, after some greatly older and probably forti- 
fied place. 

In the hollow all the water of the park gathered to a 
lake before finding its way to the river Lythe. This 
lake was at the bottom of the old garden, and the house 
at the top of it. The garden was walled on the two 
sides, and the walls ran right down to the lake. There 
were wonderful legends current among the children of 
Glaston concerning that lake, its depth, and the crea- 
tures in it ; and one terrible story, which had been made 
a ballad of, about a lady drowned in a sack, whose ghost 
njight still be seen when the moon was old, haunting 
the gardens and the house. Hence it came that none of 


THE PARK. 


57 


them went near it, except those few whose appetites for 
adventure now and then grew keen enough to prevent 
their imaginations from rousing more fear than sup- 
plied the proper relish of danger. The house itself 
even those few never dared to enter. 

Not so had it been with Helen and Leopold. The lat- 
ter had imagination enough to receive every thing offer- 
ed, but Helen was the leader, and she had next to none. 
In her childhood she had heard the tales alluded to 
from her nurses, but she had been to school since, and 
had learned hot to believe them ; and certainly she was 
not one to be frightened at what she did not believe. 
So when Leopold came in the holidays, the place was one 
of their favored haunts, and they knew every cubic 
yard in the house. 

“ Here,” said Helen to her cousin, as she opened a door 
in a little closet, and showed a dusky room which had 
no window but a small one high up in the wall of a back 
staircase, “ here is one room into which I never could 
get Poldie without the greatest trouble. I gave it up at 
last, he always trembled so till he got out again. I will 
show you such a curious place at the other end of it.” 

She led the way to a closet similar to that by which they 
had entered, and directed Bascombe how to raise a trap 
which filled all the floor of it so that it did not show. 
Under the trap was a sort of well, big enough to hold 
three upon emergency. 

“ If only they could contrive to breathe,” said George. 
“ It looks ugly. If it had but a brain and a tongue, 
it could tell tales.” 


58 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“Come,” said Helen. “ I don’t know how it is, but I 
don’t like the look of it myself now. Let us get into the 
open air again.” 

Ascending from the hollow, and passing through a 
deep belt of trees that surrounded it, they came again 
to the open park, and by and by reached the road that 
led from the lodge to the new building, upon which they 
presently encountered a strange couple. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE DWARFS. 

HE moment they had passed them, George 
turned to his cousin with a countenance 
which bore moral indignation mingled with 
disgust. The healthy instincts of the elect 
of his race were offended by the sight of such physical 
failures, such mockeries of humanity as those. 

The woman was little if any thing over four feet in 
height. She was crooked, had a high shoulder, and 
walked like a crab? one leg being shorter than the other. 
Her companion walked quite straight, with a certain 
appearance of dignity which he neither assumed nor 
could have avoided, and Which gave his gait the air of a 
march. He was not an inch taller than the woman, had 
broad square shoulders, pigeon breast, and invisible 
neck. He was twice her age, and they seemed father 
and daughter. They heard his breathing, loud with 
asthma, as they went by. 

“ Poor things !’’ said Helen, with cold kindness. 

“ It is shameful !” said George, in a tone of righteous 



6o 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


anger. “ Such creatures have no right to existence. 
The horrid manakin !’’ 

“ But, George !” said Helen, in expostulation, “ the 
poor wretch can’t help his deformity.” 

“ No ; but what right had he to marry and perpetuate 
such odious misery ?” 

“ You are too hasty : the young woman is his niece.” 

“ She ought to have been strangled the moment she 
was born — for the sake of humanity. Monsters ought 
not to live.’’ 

“ Unfortunately they have all got mothers,” said 
Helen, and something in her face made him fear he 
had gone too far. 

“ Don’t mistake me, dear Helen,” he said. “ I would 
neither starve nor drown them after they had reached 
the faculty of resenting such treatment — of the justice 
of which,” he added, smiling, “ I am afraid it would bd 
hard to convince them. But such people actually mar- 
ry — I have known cases — and that ought to be provided 
against by suitable enactments and penalties.” 

“ And so,” rejoined Helen," because they are unhappy 
already, you would heap unhappiness upon them ?” 

“ Now, Helen, you must not be unfair to me* any 
more than to your hunchbacks. It is the good of the 
many I seek, and surely that is better than the good of 
the few.” 

“ What I object to is that it should be at the expense 
of the few — who are least able to bear it.” 

"The expense is trifling,” said Bascombe. "Grant 
that it would be better for society that no such— or ra- 


THE DWARFS. 


6l 


ther put it this way : grant that it would be well for 
each individual that goes to make up society that he 
were neither deformed, sickly, nor idiotic, and you mean 
the same that I do. A given space of territory under 
given conditions will always maintain a certain number 
of human beings ; therefore such a law as I propose 
would-not mean that the number drawing the breath of 
heaven should, to take the instance before us in illustra- 
tion, be two less, but that a certain two of them should 
not be as he or she who passed now, creatures whose 
existence is a burden to them, but such as you and I, 
Helen, who may say without presumption that we are 
no disgrace to Nature’s handicraft.” 

Helen was not sensitive. She neither blushed nor 
cast down her eyes. But his tenets, thus expounded, 
had nothing very repulsive in them so far as she saw, 
and she made no further objection to them. 

As they walked up the garden again, through the 
many lingering signs of a more stately if less luxurious 
existence than that of their generation, she was calmly 
listening to a lecture on the ground ot law, namely, the 
resignation of certain personal rights for the securing 
of other and more important ones ; she understood, was 
mildly interested, and entirely satisfied. 

They seated themselves in the summer-house — a little 
wooden room under the down-sloping boughs of a huge 
cedar, and pursued their conversation — or rather Bas- 
combe pursued his monologue. A lively girl would in all 
probability have been bored to death by him, but Helen 
was not a lively girl, and was not bored at all. Ere they 


62 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


went into the house she had heard, amongst a hundred 
other things of wisdom, his views concerning crime and 
punishment, with which, good and bad, true and false, 
I shall not trouble my reader except in regard to one 
point — that of the obligation to punish. Upon this 
point he was severe. 

No person, he said, ought to allow any weakness of 
pity to prevent him from bringing to punishment the 
person who broke the laws upon which the well-being 
of the community depended. A man must remember 
that the good of the whole, and not the fate of the indi- 
vidual, was to be regarded. 

It was altogether a notable sort of tete-a-tete between 
two such perfect specimens of the race, and as at length 
they entered the house, they professed to each other to 
have much enjoyed their walk. 

Holding the opinions he did, Bascombe was in one 
thing inconsistent : he went to “ divine service” on the 
Sunday with his aunt and cousin — not to humor He- 
len's prejudices but those of Mrs. Ramshorn, who, be- 
longing, as I have said, to the profession, had strong 
opinions as to the wickedness of not going to church. 
It was of no use, he said to himself, trying to upset her 
ideas, for to succeed would only be to make her misera- 
ble, and his design was to make the race happy. In the 
grand old Abbey, therefore, they heard together morn- 
ing prayers, the Litany, and the Communion, all in one, 
after a weariful and lazy modern custom not yet extinct, 
and then a dull, sensible sermon, short, and tolerably 
well read, on the duty of forgiveness of injuries. 


THE DWARFS. 


63 


I dare say it did most of the people present a little 
good, undefinable as the faint influences of starlight, to 
sit under that “ high embowed roof,” within that vast 
artistic isolation, through whose mighty limiting the 
boundless is embodied, and we learn to feel the awful 
infinitude of the parent space out of which it is scooped. 
I dare also say that the tones of the mellow old organ 
spoke to something in many of the listeners that lay 
deeper far than the plummet of their self-knowledge had 
ever sounded. I think also that the prayers, the reading 
of which, in respect of intelligence, was admirable, were 
not only regarded as sacred utterances, but felt to be 
soothing influences by not a few of those who made not 
the slightest eftort to follow them with their hearts ; and 
I trust that on the whole their church-going tended 
rather to make them better than to harden them. But 
as to the main point, the stirring up of the children of 
the Highest to lay hold of the skirts of their Father’s 
robe, the waking of the individual conscience to say / 
•will arise, and the strengthening of the captive Will to 
break its bonds and stand free in the name of the eter- 
nal creating Freedom— for nothing of that was there 
any special provision. This belonged, in the nature of 
things, to the sermon, in which, if anywhere, the voice 
of the indwelling Spirit might surely be heard— out of 
his holy temple, if indeed that be the living soul of man, 
as St. Paul believed ; but there was no sign that the 
preacher regarded his office as having any such end, al- 
though in his sermon lingered the rudimentary tokens 


64 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


that such must have been the original intent of pulpit- 
utterance. 

On the way home, Bascombe made some objections 
to the discourse, partly to show his aunt that he had 
been attending. He admitted that one might forgive 
and forget what did not come within the scope of the 
law, but, as he had said to Helen before, a man was 
bound, he said, to punish the wrong which through 
him affected the community. 

“ George,” said h^is aunt, “ I differ from you there. 
Nobody ought to go to law to punish an injury. I 
would forgive ever so many before I would run the risk 
of the law. But as to forgetting an injury — some in- 
juries at least— no, that I never would ! — And I don’t 
believe, let the young man say what he will, that that is 
required of any one.” 

Helen said nothing. She had no enemies to forgive, 
no wrongs worth remembering, and was not interested 
in the question. She thought it a very good sermon 
indeed. 

When Bascombe left for London in the morning, he 
carried with him the lingering rustle of silk, the odor 
of lavender, and a certain blueness, not of the sky, 
which seemed to have something behind it, as never did 
the sky to him. He had nev’^er met woman so worthy 
of being his mate, either as regarded the perfection 
of her form or the hidden development of her brain — • 
evident in her capacity for the reception of truth — as his 
own cousin, Helen Lingard. Might not the relationship 
account for the fact } 


THE DWARFS. 


65 


Helen thought nothing to correspond. She consid- 
ered George a fine manly fellow. What bold and ori- 
ginal ideas he had about every thing ! Her brother was 
a baby to him ! But then Leopold was such a love of a 
boy ! Such eyes and such a smile were not to be seen 
on this side the world. Helen liked her cousin, was at- 
tached to her aunt, but loved her brother Leopold, and 
loved nobody else. His Hindoo mother, high of caste, 
had given him her lustrous eyes and pearly smile, 
which, the first moment she saw him, won his sister’s 
heart. He was then but eight years old, and she but 
eleven. Since then he had been brought up by his fa- 
ther’s elder brother, who had the family estate in York* 
shire, but he had spent part of all his holidays with her, 
and they often wrote to each other, Of late indeed his 
letters had not been many, and a rumor had reached 
her that he was not doing quite satisfactorily at Cam- 
bridge, but she explained it away to the full content- 
ment of her own heart, and went on building such cas- 
tles as her poor aerolithic skill could command, with 
Leopold ever and always as the sharer of her self-expan- 


sion. 


CHAPTER XL 


THE CURATE AT HOME. 

F we could arrive at the feelings of a fish of the 
northern ocean around which the waters sud- 
denly rose to tropical temperature, and 
swarmed with strange forms of life, uncouth 
and threatening, we should have a fair symbol of the 
mental condition in which Thomas Wingfold now found 
himself. The spiritual fluid in which his being floated 
had become all at once more potent, and he was in conse- 
quence uncomfortable. A certain intermittent stinging, 
as if from the flashes of some moral electricity, had begun 
to pass in various directions through the crude and 
chaotic mass he called himself, and he felt strangely 
restless. It never occurred to him — as how should it? 
— that he might have commenced undergoing the most 
marvellous of all changes, — one so marvellous, indeed, 
that for a man to foreknow its result or understand 
what he was passing through, would be more strange 
than that a caterpillar should recognize in the rainbow- 
winged butterfly hovering over the flower at whose leaf 
he was gnawing the perfected idea of his own potential 



THE CURATE AT HOME. 


67 


self — I mean the change of being born again. Nor were 
the symptoms such as would necessarily have suggested, 
even to a man experienced in the natural history of the 
infinite, that the process had commenced. 

A restless night followed his reflections in the churchy 
yard, and he did not wake at all comfortable. Not that 
ever he had been in the way of feeling comfortable. To 
him life had not been a land flowiiig with milk and ho- 
ney. He had had few smilos, and not many of those 
grasps of the hand which let a man know another man 
is near him in the oaltle — for had it not been something 
of a battle, how could he have come to the age of six- 
and-twenty without being worse than he was ? He 
would not have said, “ All these have I kept from my 
youth up but I can say that for several of them he 
had shown fight, although only One knew any thing of 
it. This morning, then, it was not merely that he did 
not feel comfortable : he was consciously uncomforta- 
ble. Things were getting too hot for him. That infidel 
fellow had poked several most awkward questions at 
him — yes. into him, and a good many more had in him- 
self arisen to meet them. Usually he lay a little while 
before he came to himself ; but this morning he came to 
himself at once, and not liking the interview, jumped 
out of bed as if he had hoped to leave himself there be- 
hind him. 

He had always scorned lying, until one day, when still 
a boy at school, he suddenly found that he had told 
a lie, after which he hated it— yet now, if he was to be- 
lieve ah ! whom ? did not the positive fellow and his 


68 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


own conscience say the same thing ? — his profession, 
his very life was a lie ! the very bread he ate grew on 
the rank fields of falsehood ! No, no ; it was absurd ! 
it could not be ! What had he done to find himself 
damned to such a depth ? Yet the thing must be looked 
to. He bathed himself without remorse and never even 
shivered, though the water in his tub was bitterly cold, 
dressed with more haste than precision, hurried over 
his breakfast, neglected his newspaper, and took down 
a volume of early church history. But he could not 
read; the thing was hopeless — utterly. With the 
wolves of doubt and the jackals of shame howling at his 
heels, how could he start for a thousand-mile race ! 
For God’s sake give him a weapon to turn and face 
them with ! Evidence ! all of it that was to be had was 
but such as one man received, another man .refused ; 
and the popular acceptance was worth no more in re- 
spect of Christianity than of Mohammedanism, for how 
many had given the subject at all better consideration 
than himself? And there was Sunday with its wolves 
and jackals, and but a hedge between ! He did not so 
much mind reading the prayers : he was not accounta- 
ble for what was in them, although it was bad enough 
to stand up and read them. Happy thing he was not a 
dissenter, for then he would have had to pretend to 
pray from his own soul, which would have been too hor- 
rible ! But there was the sermon ! That at least was 
supposed to contain, or to be presented as containing, 
his own sentiments. Now what were ‘his sentiments? 
For the life of him he could not tell. Had he any senti- 


THE CURATE AT HOME. 


69 


merits, any opinions, any beliefs, any unbeliefs } He 
had plenty of sermons, old, yellow, respectable ser- 
mons, not lithographed, neither composed by mind 
nor copied out by hand unknown, but in the 
writing of his old D.D. uncle, so legible that he nevei 
felt it necessary to read them over beforehand — • 
just saw that he had the right one. A hundred and 
fifty-seven such sermons, the odd one for the year that 
began on a Sunday, of unquestionable orthodoxy, had 
his kind old uncle left him in his will, with the feeling 
probably that he was not only setting him up in ser- 
mons for life, but giving him a fair start as well in the 
race of which a stall in some high cathedral was the goal. 
For his own part he had never made a sermon, at least 
never one he had judged worth preaching to a congre- 
gation.- He had rather a high idea, he thought, of 
preaching, and these sermons of his uncle he considered 
really excellent. Some of them, however, were alto- 
gether doctrinal, some very polemical : of such he 
must now beware. He would see of what kind was the 
next in order ; he would read it and make sure it con- 
tained nothing he was not, in some degree at least, pre- 
pared to hold his face to and defend — if he could not 
absolutely swear he believed it purely true. 

tie did as resolved. The first he took up was in de- 
fence of the Athanasian creed ! That would not do. 
He tried another. That was upon the Inspiration of the 
Scriptures. He glanced through it — found Moses on a 
level with St. Paul, and Jonah with St. John, and 
doubted greatly. There might be a sense — but — ! No, 


70 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


he would not meddle with it. He tried a third ; that 
was on the authority of the Church. It would not do. 
He had read each of all these sermons at least once to 
a congregation, with perfect composure and following 
indifference if not peace of mind, but now he could not 
come on one with which he was even in sympathy — not 
to say one of which he was certain that it was more 
true than false. At last he took up the odd one — that 
which could come into use but once in a week of years 
— and this was the sermon Bascombe heard and com- 
mented upon. Having read it over, and found nothing 
to compromise him with his conscience, which was like 
an irritable man trying to find his way in a windy wood 
by means of a broken lantern, he laid all the rest aside 
and felt a little relieved. 

Wingfold had never neglected the private duty of a 
^^ergyman in regard of morning and evening devotions, 
but was in the habit of dressing and undressing his soul 
with the help of certain chosen contents of the prayer- 
book— a somewhat circuitous mode of communicating 
with him who was so near him, — that is, if St. Paul was 
right in saying that he lived and moved and was in 
Him ; but that Saturday he knelt by his bedside at 
noon, and began to pray or try to pray as he had never 
prayed or tried to pray before. The perplexed man 
cried out within the clergyman, and pressed for some 
acknowledgment from God of the being he had made. 

But — was it strange to tell ? or if strange, was it not 
the most natural result nevertheless ? — almost the same 


THE CURATE AT HOME. 


71 


moment he began to pray in this truer fashion, the 
doubt rushed up in him like a torrent-spring from the 
fountains of the great deep — Was there — could there be 
a God at all ? a real being who might actually hear his 
prayer ? In this crowd of houses and shops and 
churches, amidst buying and selling and ploughing and 
praising and backbiting, this endless pursuit of ends 
and of means to ends, while yet even the wind that blew 
where it listed, blew under laws most fixed, and the 
courses of the stars were known to a hair’s-breadth, — 
was there — could there be a silent invisible God work- 
ing his own will in it all ? Was there a driver to that 
chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away 
from the pole in all directions ? and was he indeed, al- 
though invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, 
sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal ? Or 
was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels 
went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, 
matter into man, and man into nothingness ? Was 
there- — could there be a living heart to the universe that 
did positively hear him — poor, misplaced, dishonest, ig- 
norant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to under- 
take a work he neither could perform nor had the cou- 
rage to forsake, when out of the misery of the grimy 
little cellar of his consciousness he cried aloud for light 
and something to make a man of him ? For now 
that Thomas had begun to doubt like an honest 
being, every ugly thing within him began to show itself 
to his awakened probity. 

But honest and of good parentage as the doubts were. 


72 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


no sooner had they shown themselves, than the wings 
of the ascending prayers fluttered feebly and failed. 
They sank slowly, fell, and lay as dead, while all the 
wretchedness of his position rushed back upon him 
with redoubled inroad. Here was a man who could not 
pray, and yet must go and read prayers and preach in 
the old attesting church, as if he too were of those who 
knew something of the secrets of the Almighty, and 
could bring out from his treasury, if not things new and 
surprising, then things old and precious ! Ought he 
not to send round the bell-man to cry aloud that there 
would be no service ? But what right had he to lay his 
troubles, the burden of his dishonesty, upon the shoul- 
ders of them who faithfully believed, and who looked to 
him to break to them their daily bread ? And would 
not any attempt at a statement of the reasons he had 
for such an outrageous breach of all decorum be taken 
for a denial of those things concerning which he only 
desired most earnestly to know that they were true ? 
For he had received from somewhere, he knew not how 
or whence, a genuine prejudice in favor of Christiani- 
ty, while of those refractions and distorted reflexes of it 
which go by its name and rightly disgust many, he had 
had few of the tenets thrust upon his. acceptance. 

Thus into the dark pool of his dull submissive life, 
the bold words of the unbeliever had fallen — a dead stone 
perhaps, but causing a thousand motions in the living 
water. Question crowded upon question, and doubt 
upon doubt, until he could bear it no longer, and start- 


THE CURATE AT HOME. 


73 


ing from the floor on which at last he had sunk pros- 
trate, rushed in all but involuntary haste from the 
house, and scarcely knew where he was until, in a sort, 
he came to himself some little distance from the town, 
wandering hurriedly in field-paths. 


CHAPTER XII. 


AN INCIDENT. 

T was a fair morning of All Hallows’ summer. 
The trees were nearly despoiled, but the 
grass was green, and there was a memory of 
spring in the low sad sunshine : even the 
sunshine, the gladdest thing in creation, is sad some- 
times. There was no wind, nothing to fight with, 
nothing to turn his mind from its own miserable 
perplexities. How endlessly his position as a clergy- 
man) he thought, added to his miseries ! Had he been 
a man unpledged, he could have taken his own time to 
think out the truths of his relations ; as it Was, he felt 
like a man in a coffin ‘. out he must get, but had not 
room to make a single vigorous effort for freedom ! It 
did not occur to him yet, that, unpressed from without, 
his honesty unstung, he might have taken more time to 
find out where he was than Would have been either 
honest or healthful. 

He came to a stile where his path joined another that 
ran both ways, and there seated himself, just as the 
same strange couple I have already described as met by 



AN INCIDENT. 


75 


Miss Lingard and Mr. Bascombe approached and went 
by. After they had gone a good way, he caught sight 
of something lying in the path, and going to pick it up, 
found it was a small manuscript volume. 

With the pleasurable instinct of service, he hastened 
after them. They heard him, and turning waited for his 
approach. He took off his hat, and presenting the book 
to the young woman, asked if she had dropped it. Pos- 
sibly had they been ordinary people of the class to which 
they seemed to belong, he would not have uncovered to 
them, for he naturally shrunk from what might be 
looked upon as a display of courtesy, but their deformi- 
ty rendered it imperative. Her face flushed so at sight 
of the book that, in order to spare her uneasiness. 
Wingfold could not help saying with a smile, 

“ Do not be alarmed : I have not read one word of it.’’ 
She returned his smile with much sweetness, and said, 
“ I see I need not have been afraid.” 

Her companion joined in thanks and apologies for 
having caused him so much trouble. Wingfold assured 
them it had been but a pleasure. It was far from a 
scrutinizing look with which he regarded them, but the 
interview left him with the feeling that their faces were 
refined and intelligent, and their speech was good. 
Again he lifted his rather shabby hat, the man respond- 
ed with equal politeness in removing from a great gray 
head one rather better, and they turned from each other 
and went their ways, the sight of their malformation 
arousing in the curate no such questions as those with 
which it had agitated the tongue if not the heart of 


76 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


George Bascombe, to widen the scope of his perplexi- 
ties. He had heard the loud breathing of the man and 
seen the projecting eyes of the woman, but he never said 
to himself therefore that they were more hardly dealt 
with than he. Had such a thought occurred to him, he 
would have comforted the pain of his sympathy with 
the reflection that at least neither of them was a curate of 
the Church of Engknd who knew positively nothing of 
the foundation upon which that church professed to 
stand. 

How he got through the Sunday he never could have 
told. What timos a man may get through — he knows 
not how ! As soon as it was over, it was all a mist — 
from which gleamed or gloomed large the face of 
George Bascombe with its keen unbelieving eyes and 
scornful lips. All the time he was reading the prayers 
and lessons, all the time he was reading his uncle’s ser- 
mon, he had not only been aware of those eyes, but 
aware also of what lay behind them — seeing and reading 
the reflex of himself in Bascombe’s brain ; but nothing 
more whatever could he recall. 

Like finger-posts dim-seen, on a moorland journey, 
through the gathering fogs, Sunday after Sunday 
passed. I will not request my reader to accompany me 
across the confusions upon which was blowing that 
wind whose breath was causing a world to pass from 
chaos to cosmos. One who has ever gone through any 
experience of the kind himself will be able to imagine 
it ; to one who has not, my descriptions would be of 
small service : he would but shrink from the represen- 


AN INCIDENT. 


77 


tation as diseased and of no general interest. And 
he would be so far right, that the interest in such 
things must be most particular and individual or not 
at all. 

The weeks passed and seemed to bring him no light, 
only increased earnestness in the search after it. Some 
assurance he must find soon, else he would resign his 
curacy, and look out for a situation as tutor. 

Of course all this he ought to have gone through 
long ago ! But how can a man go through any thing till 
his hour be come ? Saul of Tarsus was sitting at the 
feet of Gamaliel when our Lord said to his apostles, 
“ Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will 
think that he doeth God service.” Wingfold had all 
this time been skirting the wall of the kingdom of hea- 
ven without even knowing that there was a wall there, 
not to say seeing a gate in it. The fault lay with those 
who had brought him up to the church as to the profes- 
sion of medicine, or the bar, or the drapery business — 
as if it lay on one level of choice with other human call- 
ings. Nor were the honored of the church who had 
taught him free from blame, who never warned him to 
put his shoes from ofi his feet for the holiness of the 
ground. But how were they to warn him, if they had 
sowed and reaped and gathered into barns on that 
ground, and had never.discovered therein treasure more 
holy than libraries, incomes, and the visits of royalty ? 
As to visions of truth that make a man sigh with joy, 
and enlarge his heart with more than human tenderness 
how many of those men had ever found such trea- 


78 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


sures in the fields of the church ? How many of them 
knew save by hearsay whether there be any Holy Ghost ! 
How then were they to warn other men from the dan- 
gers of following in their footsteps and becoming such 
as they ? Where, in a general ignorance and commu- 
nity of fault, shall we begin to blame ? Wingfold had 
no time to accuse any one after the first gush of bitter- 
ness. He had to awake from the dead and cry for light, 
and was soon in the bitter agony of the cataleptic strug- 
gle between life and death. 

He thought afterwards, when the time had passed, 
that surely in this period of darkness he had been visit- 
ed and upheld by a power whose presence and even in- 
fluence escaped his consciousness. He knew no-t how 
else he could have got through it. Also he remembered 
that strange helps had come to him ; that the aspects of 
nature then wonderfully softened towards him, that 
then first he began to feel sympathy with her ways and 
shows, and to see in them all the working of a diffused 
humanity. He remembered how once a hawthorn-bud 
set him weeping ; and how once, as he went miserable 
to church, a child looked up in his face and smiled, and 
how in the strength of that smile he had walked boldly 
to the lectern. 

He never knew how long he had been in the strange 
birth-agony, in which the soul is. as it were at once the 
mother that bears and the child that is born. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


A REPORT OF PROGRESS. 

N the mean time George Bascombe came and 
went ; every visit he showed clearer notions 
as to what he was for and what he was 
against ; every visit he found Helen more 
worthy and desirable than theretofore, and flattered 
himself he made progress in the conveyance of 
his opinions and judgments over into her mind. His 
various accomplishments went far in aid of his de- 
sign. There was hardly any thing Helen could do that 
George could not do as well, and some he could do bet- 
ter, while there were many things George was at- home 
in which were sealed to her. The satisfaction of teach- 
ing such a pupil he found great. When at length he 
began to make love to her, Helen found it rather agree- 
able than otherwise, and if there was a little more mak- 
ing in it than some women would have liked, Helen was 
not sufficiently in love with him to detect its presence. 
Still the pleasure of his preference was such that it 
opened her mind. with a favorable prejudice towards 



8o 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


whatever in the shape of theory or doctrine he would 
have her receive ; and much that a more experienced 
mind would have rejected because of its evident results 
in practice, was by her accepted in the-ignorance which 
confined her regard of his propositions to their intellec- 
tual relations, and prevented her from following them 
into their influences upon life, which would have re- 
flected light upon their character. For life in its real 
sense was to her as yet little more definite and present 
than a dream that waits for the coming night. Hence 
when her cousin at length ventured to attack even 
those doctrines which all women who have received a 
Christian education would naturally be expected to re- 
vere the most, she was able to listen to him unshQcked. 
But she little thought, or he either, that it was only in 
virtue of what Christian teaching she had had that she 
was capable of appreciating what was grand in his doc- 
trine of living for posterity without a hope of good re- 
sult to self beyond the consciousness that future gene- 
rations of perishing men and women would be a little 
more comfortable, and perhaps a little less faulty there- 
from. . She did not reflect either that no one’s theory 
concerning death is of much weight in his youth while 
life feels interminable, or that the gift of comfort during a 
life of so little value that the giver can part with it 
without regret is scarcely one to be looked upon as a 
mighty benefaction. 

“ But truth is truth,” George would have replied. 

What you profess to teach them might be a fact, but 
could never be a truth, I answer. And the very value 


A REPORT OF PROGRESS. 


8l 


which you falsely put upon facts you have learned to at- 
tribute to them from the supposed existence of some- 
thing at the root of all facts, namely truths^ or eternal 
laws of being. Still, if you believe that men will be 
happier from learning your discovery that there is no 
God, preach it, and prosper in proportion to its truth. 
No ; that from my pen would be a curse — no, preach it 
not, I say, until you have searched all spaces of space, 
up and down, in greatness and smallness — where I grant 
indeed, but you can not know, that you will not find him 
— and all regions of thought and feeling, all the unknown 
mental universe of possible discovery — preach it not 
until you have searched that also, I say, lest what you 
count a truth should prove to be no fact, and there 
should after all be somewhere, somehow, a very, living 
God, a Truth indeed, in whom is the universe. If you 
say, “ But I am convinced there is none,” I answer — You 
may be convinced that there is no God such as this or 
that in whom men imagine they believe, but you can not 
be convinced there is no God. 

Meantime George did not forget the present of this life 
in its future, continued particular about his cigars and 
his wine, ate his dinners with what some would call a 
good conscience and I would call a dull one, were I sure 
it was not a good digestion they really meant, and kept 
reading hard and to purpose. 

Matters as between the two made no rapid advance. 
George went on loving Helen more than any other wo- 
man, and Helen went on liking George next best to her 
brother Leopold. Whether it came of prudence, of 


82 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


which George possessed not a little, of coldness of tem- 
perament, or a pride that would first be sure of ac- 
ceptance, I do not know, but he made no formal offer 
yet of handing himself over to Helen, and certainly 
Helen was in no haste to hear, more than he to utter, 
the irrevocable. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


JEREMY TAYLOR. 

NE Tuesday morning in the spring, the curate 
received by the local post the following let- 
ter dated from The Park-Gate : 

“ Respected Sir : An obligation on my 
part which you have no doubt forgotten gives me 
courage to address you on a matter which seems to me 
of no small consequence concerning yourself. You do 
not know me, and the name at the end of my letter will 
have for you not a single association. The matter itself 
must be its own excuse. 

’ “ I sat in a free seat at the Abbey church last Sunday 

morning. I had not listened long to the sermon ere I 
began to fancy I foresaw what was coming, and in a few 
minutes more I seemed to recognize it as one of Jeremy 
Taylor’s. When I came home I found that the best 
portions of one of his sermons had, in the one you read, 
been wrought up with other material. 

“ If, sir, I imagined you to be one of such as would 
willingly have that regarded as their own which was 
better than they could produce, and would with con- 




^4 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


tentment receive any resulting congratulations, I should 
feel that I was only doing you a wrong if I gave you a 
hint which might aid you in avoiding detection ; for the 
sooner the truth concerning such a one was known, and 
the judgment of society brought to bear upon it, the 
better for him, whether the result were justification or 
the contrary. But I have read that in your countenance 
and demeanor which convinces me that, however cus- 
tom and the presence of worldly elements in the com- 
munity to which you belong may have influenced your 
judgment, you require only to be set thinking of a mat- 
ter, to follow your conscience with regard to whatever 
you may find involved in it. — I have the honor to be, 
respected sir, your obedient servant and well-wisher, 
Joseph Polwarth.” 

Wingfold sat staring at the letter, slightly stunned. 
The feeling which first grew recognizable in the chaos 
it had caused was vexation at having so committed 
himself ; the next, annoyance with his dead old uncle for 
having led him into such a scrape. There in the good 
doctor’s own handwriting lay the sermon, looking no- 
wise different from the rest ! Had he forgotten his 
marks of quotation ? Or to that sermon did he always 
have a few words of extempore introduction ? For 
himself he was as ignorant of Jeremy Taylor as of Zo- 
roaster. It could not be that that was his uncle’s mode of 
making his sermons ? Was it possible they could all be 
pieces of literary mosaic ? It was very annoying. If 
the fact came to be known, it would certainly be said 
that he had attempted to pass ofi Jeremy Taylor’s for his 


JEREMY TAYLOR. 


8c 


own — as if he would have the impudence to make the 
attempt, and with such a well-known writer ! But what 
difference did it make whether the writer was well or ill 
known ? None except as to the relative probabilities 
of escape and discovery ! And should the accusation be 
brought against him, how was he to answer it ? By 
burdening the reputation of his departed uncle with the 
odium of the fault ? Was it worse in his uncle to use 
Jeremy Taylor than in himself to use his uncle ? Or would 
his remonstrants accept the translocation of blame ? 
Would the church-going or chapel-going inhabitants of 
Glaston remain mute when it came to be discovered 
that since his appointment he had not once preached a 
sermon of his own ? How was it that knowing all 
about it in the background of his mind, he had never 
come to think of it before ? It was true that, admirer 
of his uncle as he was, he had never imagined hfmself 
reaping any laurels from the credit of his sermons ; it 
was equally true, however, that he had not told a single 
person of the hidden cistern whence he drew his large 
discourse. But what could it matter to any man, so 
long as a good sermon was preached, where it came 
from ? He did not occupy the pulpit in virtue of his 
personality, but of his office, and it was not a place for 
the display of originality, but for dispensing the bread 
of life. From the stores of other people ? Yes, certain- 
ly — if other people’s bread was better, and no one the 
worse for his taking it. “ For me, I have none,” he said 
to himself. Why then should that letter have made 
him uncomfortable ? What had he to be ashamed of ? 


86 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Why should he object to being found out ? What did 
he want to conceal ? Did not every body know that 
very few clergymen really made their own sermons ? 
Was it not absurd, this mute agreement that, although 
all men knew to the contrary, it must appear to be taken 
for granted that a man’s sermons were of his own 
mental production ? Still more absurd as well as cruel 
was the way in which they sacrificed to the known false- 
hood by the contempt they poured upon any fellow^the 
moment they were able to say of productions which never 
could have been his, that they were by this man or that 
man, or bought at this shop or that shop in Great Queen 
Street or Booksellers’ Row. After that he was an en- 
during object for the pointed finger of a mild scorn. It 
was nothing but the old Spartan game of steal as you 
will and enjoy as you can : you are nothing the worse ; 
but woe to you if you are caught in the act ! There 
something contemptible about the whole thing. He 
was a greater humbug than he had believed himself, for 
upon this humbug which he now found himself despis- 
ing he had himself been acting diligently ! It dawned 
upon him that, while there was nothing wrong in 
preaching his uncle’s sermons, there was evil in yielding 
to cast any veil, even the most transparent, over the fact 
that the sermons were not his own. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE PARK GATE. 

E had, however, one considerate, even friendly- 
parishioner, it seemed, whom it became him 
at least to thank for his openness. He 
ceased to pace the room, sat down at his 
writing-table, and acknowledged Mr. Polwarth’s let- 
ter, expressing his obligation for its contents, and 
saying that- he would do himself the honor of call- 
ing upon him that afternoon, in the hope of being 
allowed to say for himself what little could be said, 
and of receiving counsel in regard to the difficulty 
wherein he found himself. He sent the note by 
his landlady’s boy, and as soon as he had finished 
his lunch, which meant his dinner, for he could no 
longer afford to dull his soul in its best time for reading 
and thinking, he set out to find Park Gale, which he 
took for some row of dwellings in the suburbs. 

Going in the direction pointed out, and finding he 
had left all the houses behind him, he stopped at the 
gate of Osterfield Park to make further inquiry. The 
door of the lodge was opened by one whom he took, for 




88 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


the first half-second, to be a child, but recognized, the 
next, as the same young woman whose book he had 
picked up in the fields a few months before. He had 
never seen her since, but her deformity and her face to^ 
gether had made it easy to remember her. 

“We have met before,” he said, in answer to her 
courtesy and smile, “ and you must now do me a small 
favor if you can.” 

“ I shall be most happy, sir. Please come in,” she 
answered. 

“ I am sorry I can not at this moment, as I have an en- 
gagement. Can you tell me where Mr. Polwarth of the 
Park Gate lives ?” 

The girl’s smile of sweetness changed to one of 
amusement as she repeated, in a gentle voice through 
which ran a thread of suffering, 

“ Come in, sir, please. My uncle’s name is Joseph 
Polwarth, and this is the gate to Osterfield Park. 
People know it as the Park Gate.” 

The house was not one of those trim modern park- 
lodges, all angles and peaks, which one sees everywhere 
nowadays, but a low cottage, with a very thick, wig- 
like thatch, into which rose two astonished eyebrows 
over the stare of two half-awake dormer-windows. On 
the front of it were young leaves and old hips enough 
to show that in summer it must be covered with roses. 

Wingfold entered at once, and followed her through 
the kitchen upon which the door immediately opened, a 
bright place, with stone floor, and shining things on the 
walls, to a neat little parlor, cosey and rather dark, with 


THE PARK GATE. 


89 


a small window to the garden behind, and a smell of 
last year’s roses. 

“ My uncle will be here in a few minutes,” she said, 
placing a chair for him. “ I would have had a fire here, 
but my uncle always talks better amongst his books. 
He expected you, but my lord’s steward sent for him up 
to the new house.” 

He took the chair she offered him, and sat down to 
wait. He had not much of the gift of making talk — a 
questionable accomplishment, — and he never could ap- 
proach his so-called inferiors but as his equals, the fact 
being that in their presence he never felt an)’’ difference. 
Notwithstanding his ignorance of the lore of Christi- 
anity, Thomas Wingfold was, in regard to some things, 
gifted with what I am tempted to call a divine stupidity. 
Many of the distinctions and privileges after which men 
follow, and of the annoyances and slights over which 
they fume, were to the curate inappreciable : he did not 
and could not see them. 

“ So you are warders of the gate here. Miss Pol- 
warth ?” he said, assuming that to be her name, and 
rightly, when the young woman, who had fora moment 
left the room, returned. 

“ Yes,” she answered, “ we have kept it now for about 
eight years, sir. It is no hard task. But I fancy there 
will be a little more to do when the house is finished.” 

“ It is a long way for you to go to church.” 

“ It would be, sir ; but I do not go.” 

“Your uncle does.” 

“ Not very often, sir.” 


90 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


She left the door open and kept coming and going 
between the kitchen and the parlor, busy about house 
affairs. Wingfold sat and watched her as he had oppor- 
tunity with growing interest. 

She had the full-sized head that is so often set on a 
small body, and it looked yet larger from the quantity 
of rich brown hair upon it — hair which some ladies 
would have given their income to possess. Clearly too 
it gave pleasure to its owner, for it was becomingly as 
well as carefully and modestly dressed. Her face 
seemed to Wingfold more interesting every fresh peep 
he had of it, until at last he pronounced it to himself 
one of the sweetest he had ever seen. Its prevailing 
expression was of placidity, and something that was not 
contentment merely ; I would term it satisfaction, were 
I sure that my reader would call up the very antipode 
of satisfaction. And yet there were lines of past and 
shadows of present suffering upon it. The only sign, how- 
ever, that her poor crooked body was not at present to- 
tally forgotten was a slight shy undulation that now 
and then flickered along the lines of her sensitive 
mouth, seeming to indicate a shadowy dim-defined 
thought, or rather feeling, of apology, as if she would 
disarm prejudice by an expression of sorrow that she 
could not help the pain and annoyance her unsightli- 
ness must occasion. Every feature in her thin face was 
good, and seemed, individually almost, to speak of a 
loving spirit, yet he could see ground for suspecting 
that keen expressions of a qufek temper could be no 
strangers upon those delicately-modelled forms. Her 


THE PARK GATE. 


91 


hands and feet were both as to size and shape those of 
a mere child. 

He was still studying her like a book which a boy 
reads by stealth, when with slow step her uncle entered 
the room. 

Wingfold rose and held out his hand. 

“ You are welcome, sir,” said Polwarth modestly, witn 
the strong grasp of a small firm hand. “ Will you walk 
upstairs with me where we shall be undisturbed ? My 
niece has, 1 hope, already made my apologies for not 
being at home to receive you. — Rachel, my child, will 
you get us a cup of tea, and by the time it is ready we 
shall have got through our business, I dare say.” 

The face of Wingfold’s host and new friend in expres- 
sion a good deal resembled that of his niece, but bore 
traces of yet greater suffering — bodily, and it might be 
mental as well. It did not look quite old enough for 
the whiteness of the plentiful hair that crowned it, and 
yet there was that in it which might account for the 
whiteness. 

His voice was a little dry and husky, streaked as it 
were with the asthma whose sounds made that big dis- 
proportioned chest seem like the cave of the east wind ; 
but it had a tone of dignity and decision in it quite in 
harmony with both matter and style of his letter, and 
before Wingfold had followed him to the top of the 
steep narrow strait staircase all sense of incongruity in 
him had vanished from his mind. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THE ATTIC. . 

HE little man led the way into a tolerably 
large room, with down-sloping ceiling on 
both sides, lighted by a small window in 
the gable, near the fireplace, and a dor- 
mer window as well. The low walls, up to the slope, 
were filled with books ; books lay on the table, on the 
bed, on chairs, and in corners everywhere. 

“ Aha !” said Wingfold, as he entered and cast his 
eyes around, “ there is no room for surprise that you 
should have found me out so easily, Mr. Polwarth ! 
Here you have a legion of detectives for such rascals.” 

The little man turned, and for a moment looked at 
him with a doubtful and somewhat pained expression, 
as if he had notibeen prepared for such an entrance on 
a solemn question ; but a moment’s reading of the cu- 
rate’s honest face, which by this time had a good deal 
more print upon it than would have been found there 
six months agone, sufficed ; the cloud melted into a 
smile, and he said cordially, . 



THE ATTIC. 


93 


“ It is very kind of you, sir, to take my presumption 
in such good part. Pray sit down, sir. You will find 
that chair a comfortable one.” 

“ Presumption !” echoed Wingfold. “ The presump- 
tion was all on my part, and the kindness on yours. But 
you must first hear my explanation, such as it is. It 
makes the matter hardly a jot the better, only a man 
would not w'illingly look worse, or better either, than he 
is, and besides, we must understand each other if we 
would be friends. However unlikely it may seem to 
you, Mr. Polwarth, I really do share the common weak- 
ness of wanting to be taken exactly for what I am, nei- 
ther more nor less.” 

“ It is a noble weakness, and far enough from common, 
I am sorry to think,” returned Polwarth. 

The curate then told the gate-keeper of his uncle’s 
legacy, and his own ignorance of Jeremy Taylor. 

“ But,” he concluded, “ since you set me thinking 
about it, my judgment has capsized itself, and it now 
seems to me worse to use my uncle’s sermons than to 
have used the bishop’s, which any one might discover 
to be what the}' are.” 

“ I see no harm in either,” said Polwarth, “ provided 
only it be above board. I believe some clergymen 
think the only evil lies in detection. I doubt if they 
ever escape it, and believe the amount of successful de- 
ception in that kind to be very small indeed. Many in a 
congregation can tell, by a kind of instinct, whether a 
man be preaching his own sermons or not. But the 
woTst evil appears to me to lie in the tacit understand- 


94 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ing that a sermon must seem to be a man’s own, although 
all in the congregation know, and the would-be preach- 
er knows that they know, that it is none of his.” 

“ Then you mean, Mr. Polwarth, that I should solemn- 
ly acquaint my congregation next Sunday with the fact 
that the sermon I am about to read to them is one of 
many left me by my worthy uncle, Jonah Driftwood, 
D.D., who on his deathbed expressed the hope that I 
should support their teaching by my example, for, hav- 
ing gone over them some ten or fifteen times in the 
course of his incumbency, and bettered each every time 
until he could do no more for it, he did not think, save 
by my example, I could carry further the enforcement 
of the truths they contained : shall I tell them all that ?” 

Polwarth laughed, but with a certain seriousness in 
his merriment, which, however, took nothing from its 
genuineness, indeed seemed rather to add thereto. 

“It would hardly be needful to enter so fully into 
particulars,” he said. “ It would be enough to let them 
know that you wished it understood between them and 
you that you did not profess to teach them any thing of 
yourself, but merely to bring to bear upon them the 
^ teaching of others. It would raise complaints and ob- 
jections, doubtless ; but for that you must be prepared 
if you would do anything right.” 

Wingfold was silent, thoughtful, saying to himself, 
“ How straight an honest bow can shoot !— But this in- 
volves something awful. To stand up in that pulpit 
and speak about myself ! I who, even if I had any 
opinions, could never see reasons for presenting them 


THE ATTIC. 


95 


to other people ! It’s my office, is it — not me ? Then I 
wish my Office would write his own sermons. He can 
read the prayers well enough !” 

All his life, a little heave of pent-up humor would 
now and then shake his burden into a more comfortable 
position upon his bending shoulders. He gave a for- 
lorn laugh. 

“ But,” resumed the small man, “ have you never 
preached a sermon of your own thinking — I don’t mean 
of your own making — one that came out of the com- 
mentaries, which are, I am told, the mines whither some 
of our most noted preachers go to dig for their first in- 
spirations — but one that came out of your own heart — 
your delight in something you had found out, or some- 
thing you felt much }” 

‘No,” answered Wingfold ; “I have nothing, never 
had any thing worth giving to another ; and it would 
seem to me very unreasonable to subject a helpless con- 
gregation to the blundering attempts of such a fellow to 
put into the forms of reasonable speech things he really 
knows nothing about.” 

“ You must know about some things which it might 
do them good to be reminded of— even if they know 
them already,” said Polwarth. “ I can not imagine that 
a man who looks things in the face as you do the mo- 
ment they confront you, has not lived at all, has never 
met with anything in his history which has taught him 
something other people need to be taught. I profess 
myself a believer in preaching, and consider that in so 
far as the Church of England has ceased to be a preach- 


96 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ing church — and I don’t call nine tenths of what goes 
by the name of it preaching — she has forgotten a mighty 
part of her high calling. Of course a man to whom no 
message has been personally given has no right to take 
the place of a prophet, and can not, save by more of 
less of simulation ; but there is room for teachers as 
well as prophets, and the more need of teachers that 
the prophets are so few ; and a man may right honestly 
be a clergyman who teaches the people, though he may 
possess none of the gifts of prophecy.” • 

“ I do not now see well how you are leading me,” said 
Wingfold, considerably astonished at both the aptness 
and fluency with which a man in his host’s position was 
able to express himself. “ Pray, what do you mean by 
prophecy?" 

“ I mean what I take to be the sense in which St. 
Paul uses the word — I mean the highest kind of preach- 
ing. But I will come to the point practically : a man, I 
say, who dees not feel in his soul that he has something 
to tell his people should straightway turn his energy to 
the providing of such food for them as he finds feeds 
himself. In other words, if he has nothing new in his 
own treasure, let him bring something old out of an- 
other man’s. If his soul is unfed, he can hardly be ex- 
pected to find food for other people, and has no busi- 
ness in any pulpit, but ought to betake himself to some 
other employment — whatever he may have been predes- 
tined to — I mean, made fit for.” 

“ Then do you intend that a man should make up his 
sermons from the books he reads?” 


THE ATTIC. 


97 


“ Yes, if he can not do better. But then I would have 
him read — not with his sermon in his eye, but with his 
people in his heart. Men in business and professions 
have so little time for reading or thinking — and idle 
people have still less — that their means of grace, as the 
theologians say, are confined to discipline without nou- 
rishment, whence their religion, if they have any, is 
often from mere atrophy but a skeleton ; and the office 
of preaching is, first of all, to wake them up lest their 
sleep turn to death ; next, to make them hungry, and 
lastly to supply that hunger ; and for all these things 
the pastor has to take thought. If he feed not the flock 
of God, then is he an hireling, and no shepherd.” 

At this moment Rachel entered with a small tea-tray: 
she could carry only little things, and a few at a time. 
She cast a glance of almost loving solicitude at the 
young man who now sat before her uncle with head 
bowed and self-abasement on his honest countenance, 
then a look of almost expostulation at her uncle, as if 
interceding for a culprit, and begging the master not to 
be too hard upon him. But the little man smiled — such 
a sweet smile of reassurance that her face returned at 
once to its prevailing expression of content. She 
cleared a place on the table, set down her tray, and 
went to bring cups and saucers. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


polwarth’s plan. 

THINK I understand you now,” said Wing- 
fold, after the little pause occasioned by the 
young woman’s entrance; “You would 
have a man who can not be original, deal 
honestly in second-hand goods. Or perhaps, rather, 
he should say to the congregation, ‘ This is not home- 
made bread I offer you, but something better. I got 
it from this or that baker’s shop. I have eaten of it 
myself, and it has agreed well with me and done me 
good. If you chew it well, I don’t doubt you also will 
find it good.’ — Is that something like what you would 
have, Mr. Polwarth ?” 

“ Precisely,” answered the gate-keeper. “But,” he 
added, after a moment’s delay, “ I should be sorry if 
you stopped there.” 

“ Stopped there !” echoed Wingfold. “ The question 
is whether I can begin there. You have no idea how 
ignorant I am — how little I have read !” 

“ I have some idea of both, I fancy. I must have 



polwarth’s plan. 


99 


known considerably less than you at your age, for I was 
never at a university.” 

“ But perhaps even then you had more of the know- 
ledge which, they say, life only can give.” 

“ I have it now, at all events. But of that every one 
has enough who lives his life. Those who gain no ex- 
perience are those who shirk the king’s highway for 
fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.” 

“You ought to be a clergyman yourself, sir,” said 
Wingfold, humbly. “ How is it that such as I — ” 

Here he checked himself, knowing something of how 
it was. 

“ I hope I ought to be just what I am,. neither more 
nor less,” replied Polwarth. “ As to being a clergyman, 
Moses had a better idea about such things, at least so 
far as concerns outsides, than you seem to have, Mr. 
Wingfold. He would never have let a man who 
in size and shape is a mere mockery of the human 
stand up to minister to the congregation. But if you 
will let me help you, I shall be most grateful ; for of late 
I have been oppressed with the thought that I serve no 
one but myself and my niece. I am in mortal fear of 
growing selfish under the weight of my privileges.” 

A fit of asthmatic coughing seized him, and grew in 
severity until he seemed struggling for his life. It was 
at the worst when his niece entered, but she showed no 
alarm, only concern, and did nothing but go up to him 
and lay her hand on his back between his shoulders till 
the fit was over. The instant the convulsion ceased, its 
pain dissolved in a smile. 


lOO 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Wingfold uttered some lame expressions of regret 
that he should suffer so much. 

“ It is really nothing to distress you, or me either, 
Mr. Wingfold,” said the little man. “Shall we have a 
cup of tea, and then resume our talk ?” 

“ The fact, I find, Mr. Polwarth,” said the curate, giv- 
ing the result of what had been passing through his 
mind, and too absorbed in that to reply to the invita- 
tion, “ is that I must not, and indeed can not, give you 
half-confidences. I will tell you all that troubles me, 
for it is plain that 5'^ou know something of which I am 
ignorant — something which, I have great hopes, will 
turn out to 'be the very thing I need to know. May I 
speak ? Will you let me talk about myself.^” 

“I am entirely at your service, Mr. Wingfold,” re- 
turned Polwarth ; and seeing the curate did not touch 
his tea, placed his own cup again on the table. 

The young woman got down like a child from the 
chair upon which she had perched herself at the table, 
and, with a kind look at Wingfold, was about to leave 
the room. 

“ No, no, Miss Polwarth !” said the curate, rising ; “ I 
shall not be able to go on if I feel that I have sent you 
away — and your tea untouched too ! What a selfish and 
ungrateful fellow I am ! I did not even observe that 
you had given me tea ! But you would pardon me if 
you knew what I have been going through. If you 
don’t mind staying, we can talk and drink our tea at the 
same time. I am very fond of tea when it is so good 


polwarth’s plan. 


lOI 


as I see yours is. I only fear I may have to say some 
things that will shock you.” 

“ I will stay till then,” replied Rachel, with a smile, 
and climbed again upon her chair. “ I am not much 
afraid. My uncle says things sometimes fit to make a 
Pharisee’s hair stand on his head, but somehow they 
make my heart burn inside me. — May I stop, uncle ? I 
should like so much !” 

” Certainly, my child, if Mr. Wingfold will not feel 
your presence a restraint.” 

“ Not in the least,’’ said the curate. 

Miss Polwarth helped them to bread and butter, and 
a brief silence followed. 

“ I was brought up to the church,’’ said Wingfold at 
length, playing with his teaspoon, and looking down on 
the table. “ It’s an awful shamQ such a thing should 
have been, but I don’t find out that any body in particu- 
lar was to blame for it. Things are all wrong that way, 
in general, I* doubt. I pass my examinations with de- 
cency, distinguish myself in nothing, go before the 
bishop, am admitted a deacon, after a year am ordained a 
priest, and after another year or two of false preaching 
and of parish work, suddenly find myself curate in 
charge of a grand old abbey church ; but as to what the 
whole thing means in practical relation with myself as 
a human being, I am as ignorant as Simon Magus, with- 
out his excuse. Do not mistake me. I think I could 
stand an examination on the doctrines of the church 
as contained in the articles and prayer-book generally. 


102 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


But for all they have done for me I might as well have 
never heard of them." , 

“ Don’t be quite sure of that, Mr. Wingfold. At least 
they have brought you to inquire if there be any thing 
in them.” 

“ Mr. Polwarth,” returned Wingfold abruptly, “ I can 
not even prove there is a God !” 

“ But the Church of England exists for the sake of 
teaching Christianity, not proving that there is a God.’’ 

“ What is Christianity, then ?” 

“ God in Christ, and Christ in man.” 

“ What is the use of that if there be no God ?’* 

“ None whatever.” 

“ Mr. Polwarth, can you prove there is a God .^” 

“ No.” 

“ Then if you donT believe there is a God — I don't 
know what is to become of me,” said the curate, in a 
tone of deep disappointment, and rose to go. 

“ Mr. Wingfold,” said the little man, with a smile and 
a deep breath as of delight at the thought that was 
moving him, “ I know him in my heart, and he is all in 
all to me. You did not ask whether I believed in him, 
but whether I could prove that there was a God. As 
well ask a fly which has not yet crawled about the 
world if^he can prove that it is round !” 

“ Pardon me, and have patience with me,” said Wing- 
fold, resuming his seat. “ I am a fool. But it is life or 
death to me.” 

“ I would we were all such fools ! But please ask me 
no more questions ; or ask me as many as you will, but 


polwarth’s plan. 


103 


expect no answers just yet. I want to know more of 
your mind first.” 

“ Well, I will ask questions, but press for no answers. 
If you can not prove there is a God, do you know for 
certain that such a one as Jesus Christ ever lived ? Can 
it be proved with positive certainty ? I say nothing of 
what they call the doctrines of Christianity, or the au- 
thority of the church, or the sacraments, or any thing of 
that sort. Such questions are at present of no interest 
to me. And yet the fact that they do not interest me 
were enough to prove me in as false and despicable a 
position as ever man found himself occupying — as ar^ 
rant a hypocrite and deceiver as any god-personating 
priest in the Delphic temple. I had rather a man de- 
spised than excused me, Mr. Polwarth, for I am at issue 
with myself, and love not my past.” 

“ I shall do neither, Mr. Wingfold. Go on, if you 
please, sir. I am more deeply interested than I can tell 
you.” 

“ Some few months ago, then, I met a young man who 
takes for granted the opposite of all that I had up to 
that time taken for granted, and which now I want to 
be able to prove. He spoke with contempt of my pro- 
fession. I could not defend my profession, and of^ 
course had to despise myself. I began to think. I be- 
gan to pray — if you will excuse me for mentioning it. 
My whole past life appeared like the figures that glide 
over the field of a carnera-obscura — not an abiding fact 
in it all. A cloud gathered about me, and hangs about 
me still. I call, but no voice answers me out of the 


104 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


darkness, and at times I am in despair. I would, for 
the love and peace of honesty, give up the profession, 
but I shrink from forsaking what I may yet possibly 
find — though I fear, I fear — to be as true as I wish to 
find it. Something, I know not what, holds me to it — 
some dim vague affection, possibly mere prejudice, aid- 
ed by a love for music and the other sweet sounds of 
our prayers and responses. Nor would I willingly be 
supposed to deny what I dare not say — indeed know 
not how to say I believe, not knowing what it is. I 
should nevertheless have abandoned every thing months 
ago, had I not felt bound by my agreement to serve my 
rectory for a year. You are the only one of the congre- 
gation who has shown me any humanity, and I beg of 
you to be my friend and help me. What shall I do ? 
After the avowal you have made, I may well ask you 
again. How am I to know that there is a God 

“ It were a more pertinent question, sir,” returned 
Polwarth, — “ If there be a God, how am I to find him ? 
And, as I hinted before, there is another question — 
one you have already put — more pertinent to your posi- 
tion as an English clergyman : Was there ever such a 
man as Jesus Christ? — Those, I think, were your own 
words : what do you mean by such a man ?” 

“ Such as he is represented in the New Testament.” 

, “ From that representation, what description would 
you give of him now ? What is that such ? What sort of 
person, supposing the story true, would you take this 
Jesusjrorn that story to haye been ?” 

= Wingfold thought for a while.; • 


polwarth’s plan. 


105 


“ I am a worse humbug than I fancied,” he said. “ I 
can not tell what he was. My thoughts of him are so 
vague and indistinct that it would take me a long time 
to render myself able to answer your question.” 

“ Perhaps longer still than you think, sir. It took 
me a very long time.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


JOSEPH POLWARTH. 

HALL I tell you,” the gate-koeper went on, 
“ something of my life, in return of the con- 
fidence you have honored me with ?” 

“ Nothing could be more to my mind,” an- 
swered Wingfold. “And I trust, ” he added, “it is no 
unworthy curiosity that makes me anxious to under- 
stand how you have come to know so much.” 

“ Indeed it is not that I know much,” said the little 
man. “ On the contrary, I am the most ignorant person 
of my acquaintance. You would be astonished to dis- 
cover what I don’t know. But the thing is that I know 
what is worth knowing. Yet I get not a crumb more 
than my daily bread by it — I mean the bread by which 
the inner man lives. The man who gives himself to 
making money will seldom fail of becoming a rich 
man ; and it would be hard if a man who gave him- 
self to find wherewithal to still the deepest crav- 
ings of his best self should not be able to find that 
bread of life. I tried to make a little money by book- 
selling once : I failed — not to pay my debts, but to 



JOSEPH POLWARTH. 


107* 


make the money ; I could not go into it heartil3^ or 
give it thought enough, so it was all right I should not 
succeed ; but what I did and do make my object does 
not disappoint me. 

“ My ancestors, as my name indicates, were of and in 
Cornwall, where they held large property. Forgive the 
seeming boast — it is but fact, and can reflect little 
enough on one like me. . Scorn and pain mingled with 
mighty hope is a grand prescription for weaning the 
heart from the judgments and aspirations of this world. 
Later ancestors were, not many generations ago, the 
proprietors of this very property of Osterfield, which 
the uncle of the present Lord de Barre bought, and to 
which I, their descendant, am gate-keeper. What with 
gambling, drinking, and worse, they deserved to lose it. 
The results of their lawlessness are ours : we are what 
and where you see us. With the inherited poison, the 
Rither gave the antidote. Rachel, my child, am I not 
right when I say that you thank God with me for hav- 
ing thus visited the iniquities of the fathers upon the 
children }” 

“ I do, uncle ; you know I do — from the bottom of my 
heart,” replied Rachel in a low tender voice. 

A great solemnity came upon the spirit of Wingfold, 
and for a moment he felt as if he sat wrapt in a cloud of 
sacred marvel, beyond and around which lay a gulf of 
music too perfect to touch his sense. But presently 
Polwarth resumed : 

“ My father was in appearance a remarkably fine man, 
tall and stately. Of him I have little to say. If he did 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


*io8 


not do well, my grandfather must be censured first. 
He had a sister very like Rachel here. Poor aunt Lot- 
tie ! She was not so happy as my little one. My bro- 
thers were all fine men like himself, yet they all died 
young except my brother Robert. He too is dead now, 
thank God, and I trust he is in peace. I had almost be- 
gun to fear with himself that he would never die. And 
yet he was but fifty. He left me my Rachel with her 
twenty pounds a year. I have thirty of my own, and 
this cottage we have rent-free for attending to the gate. 
I shall tell you more about my brother some day. 
There are none of the family left now but myself and 
Rachel. God in his mercy is about to let it cease. 

“ I was sent to one of our smaller public schools — 
mainly, I believe, because 1 was an eyesore to my hand- 
some father. There I made, I fancy, about as good a be- 
ginning as wretched health and the miseries of a sensi- 
tive nature, ever conscious of exposure, without mother 
or home to hide its feebleness and deformity, would 
permit. For then first I felt myself an outcast. I was 
the butt of all the coarser-minded of my school-fellows, 
and the kindness of some could but partially make up 
for it. On the other hand, I had no haunting and irri- 
tating sense of wrong, such as I believe not a few of my 
fellows in deformity feel — no burning indignation, or 
fierce impulse to retaliate on those who injured me or 
on the society that scorned me. The isolation that be- 
longed to my condition wrought indeed to the intensi- 
fying of my individuality, but that again intensified my 
consciousness of need more than wrong, until the pas- 


JOSEPH POLWARTH. 


109 


sion blossomed almost into assurance, and at length I 
sought even with agony the aid to which my wretched- 
ness seemed to have a right. My longing was mainly 
for a refuge, for some corner into which I might creep, 
where I should be concealed, and so at rest. The sole 
triumph I coveted over my persecutors was to know 
that they could not find me — that I had a friend stronger 
than they. It is no wonder I should not remember when 
I began to pray, and hope that God heard me. I used 
to fancy to myself that I lay in his hand and peeped 
through his fingers at my foes. That was at night, for 
my deformity brought me one blessed comfort — that I 
had no bed-fellow. This I felt at first as both a sad de- 
privation and a painful rejection, but I learned to pray 
the sooner for the loneliness, and the heartier from the 
solitude which was as a chamber with closed door. 

“ I do not know what I might have taken to had I 
been made like other people, or what plans my mother 
cherished for me. But it soon became evident, as time 
passed and I grew no taller but more misshapen, that 
to bring me up to a profession would be but to render my 
deformity the more painful to myself. I spent, therefore, 
the first few years after I left school at home, keeping 
out of my father’s way as much as possible, and cleav- 
ing fast to my mother. When she died, she left her lit- 
tle property between me and my brother. He had been 
brought up to my father’s profession — ^that of an engi- 
neer. My father could not touch the principal of this 
money, but neither, while he lived, could we the inte- 
rest. I hardly know how I lived for the next three or 


no. 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


four years — it must have been almost on charity, I 
think. My father was never at home, and but for the 
old woman who had been our only attendant all my life, I 
think very likely I should have starved. I spent my 
time mostly in reading — whatever I could lay my hands 
upon — and that not carelessly, but with sucli reflection 
as I was capable of. One thing I may- mention, as 
showing how I was still carried in the same direction as 
before — that, without any natural turn for handicraft, I 
constructed for myself a secret place of carpenter's 
work in a corner of the garret, small indeed, but big 
enough for a couch on which I could lie, and a table as 
long as the couch. That was all the furniture. The 
walls were lined from top to bottom with books, mostly 
gathered from those lying about the house. Cunningly 
was the entrance to this nest contrived : I doubt if any 
one may have found it yet. If some imaginative dreamy 
boy has come upon it, what a find it must have been to 
him ! I could envy him the pleasure. There I always 
went to say my prayers and read my Bible. But some- 
times The Arabian Nights, or some other book of en- 
trancing human invention, would come between, and 
make me neglect both, and then I would feel bad and 
forsaken ; for as yet I knew little of the Heart to which 
I cried for shelter and warmth and defence. 

“ Somewhere in this time, at length,*! began to feel 
dissatisfied, even displeased with myself. At first the 
feeling was vague, altogether undefined — a mere sense 
that I did not fit into things, that I was not what I 
ought to be, what was somehow and by the Authority 


JOSEPH POLWARTH. 


Ill 


required of me. This went on, began to gather roots 
rather than send them out, grew towards something 
more definite. I began to be aware that, heavy afflic- 
tion as it was to be made so different from my fellows, 
my outward deformity was but a picture of my inward 
condition. There nothing was right. Many things 
which in theory I condemned, and in others despised, 
were yet a part of myself, or, at best, part of an evil dis- 
ease cleaving fast unto me. I found myself envious and 
revengeful and conceited. I discovered that I looked 
down on people whom I thought less clever than my- . 
self. Once I caught myself scorning a young fellow to 
whose disadvantage I knew nothing, except that God 
had made him handsome enough for a woman. All at 
once one day, with a sickening conviction it came upon 
me — with one of those sudden slackenings of the cord 
of self-consciousness, in which it doubles back quiver- 
ing, and seems to break, while the man for an instant 
beholds his individuality apart from himself, is general- 
ly frightened at it, and always disgusted — a strange and 
indeed awful experience, which if it lasted longer than 
its allotted moment, might well drive a man mad who 
had no God to whom to offer back his individuality, in 
appeal against his double consciousness— it was in one 
of these cataleptic fits of the spirit, I say, that I first saw 
plainly what a contemptible little wretch I was, and 
writhed in the bright agony of conscious worthlessness. 

“ I now concluded that I had been nothing but a Pha- 
risee and a hypocrite, praying with a bad heart, and thnt 
God saw me just as detestable as I saw myself, and dc- 


12 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


spised me and was angry with me. I read my Bible 
more diligently than ever for a time, found in it nothing 
but denunciation and wrath, and soon dropped it in de- 
spair. I had already ceased to pray. 

“ One day a little boy mocked me. I flew into a rage, 
and, rendered by passion for the moment fleet and 
strong, pursued and caught him. Whatever may be a 
man’s condition of defence against evil, I have learned 
that he can not keep the good out of him. When the 
boy found himself in my clutches, he turned on me a 
look of such terror that it disarmed me at once, and, 
confounded and distressed to see a human being in such 
abject fear, a state which in my own experience I knew 
to be horrible, ashamed also that it should be before such 
a one as myself, I would have let him go instantly, but 
that I could not without having comforted him. But 
not a word of mine could get into his ears, and I saw at 
length that he was so ^r^-possessed, that every tone of 
kindness I uttered, sounded to him a threat : nothing 
would do but let him go. The moment he found him- 
self free, he fled headlong into the pond, got out again, 
ran home, and told, with perfect truthfulness I believe, 
though absolute inaccuracy, that I threw him in. After 
this I tried to govern my temper, but found that the 
more I tried, the more even that I succeeded outwardly, 
that is, succeeded in suppressing the signs and deeds of 
wrath, the less could I keep down the wrath in my soul. 
I then tried never to think about myself at all, and read 
and read — not the Bible — more and more in order to 
forget myself. But ever through all my reading and 


JOSEPH POLWARTH. 


II3 


thinking I was aware of the lack of harmony at the 
heart of me : I was not that which it was well to be ; I 
was not at peace ; I lacked ; I was distorted ; I was sick. 
Such were my feelings, not my reflections. All that time 
is as the memory of an unlovely dream — a dream of 
confusion and pain. 

“ One evening, in the twilight, I lay alone in my little 
den, not thinking, but with mind surrendered and pas- 
sive to what might come into it. It was very hot — in- 
deed sultry. My little skylight was open, but not a 
breath of air entered. What preceded I do not know, 
but the face of the terrified boy rose before me, or in me 
rather, and all at once I found myself, eagerly, painfully, 
at length almost in an agony, persuading him that I 
would not hurt him, but meant well and friendlily towards 
him. Again I had just let him go in despair, when the 
sweetest, gentlest, most refreshing little waft of air 
came in at the window and just went being, hardly mov- 
ing, over my forehead. Its greeting was more delicate 
than even my mother’s kiss, and yet it cooled my whole 
body. Now whatever, or whencesoever the link, if any 
be supposed needful to account for the fact, it kept below 
in the secret places of the springs, for I saw it not ; but 
the next thought of which I was aware was. What if I 
misunderstood God the same way the boy had mis- 
understood me ! and the next thing was to take my New 
Testament from the shelf on which I had laid it aside. 

“ Another evening of that same summer, I said to my- 
self that I would begin at the beginning and read it 
through. I had no definite idea in the resolve; it 


114 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


seemed a good thing to do, and I would do it. It would 
serve towards keeping up my connection in a way with 
things above, I began, but did not that night get 
through the first chapter of St. Matthew. Conscien- 
tiously I read every word of the genealogy, but when I 
came to the twenty-third verse and read, ‘Thou shalt 
call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people 
from their sins' I fell on my knees. No system 
of theology had come between me and a common-sense 
reading of the book. I did not for a moment imagine 
that to be saved from my sins meant to be saved from 
the punishment of them. That would have been no 
glad tidings to me. My sinfulness was ever before me, 
and often my sins too, and I loved them not, yet could 
not free myself of them. They were in me and of me, 
and how was I to part myself from that which came to 
me with my consciousness, which asserted itself in me 
as one with my consciousness } I could not get be- 
hind myself so as to reach its root. But here was 
news of one who came from behind that root itself to 
deliver me from that in me which made being a bad 
thing ! Ah ! Mr. Wingfold, what if, after all the dis- 
coveries made, and all the theories set up and pulled 
down, amid all the commonplaces men call common 
sense, notwithstanding all the overpowering and ex- 
cluding self-assertion of things that are seen, ever cry- 
ing, ‘ Here we are, and save us there is nothing ; the 
Unseen is the Unreal !’ — what if, I say, notwithstanding 
all this, it should yet be that the strongest weapon a 
man can wield is prayer to one who made him ! What 


JOSEPH POLWARTH. 


• II5 


if the man who lifts up his heart to the unknown God 
even, be entering, amid the mockery of men who wor- 
ship what they call natural law and science, into the re- 
gion whence issues every law, and where the ver^ 
material of science is born ! 

“ To tell you all that followed, if I could recall and 
narrate it in order, would take hours. Suffice it that 
from that moment 1 was a student, a disciple. Soon to 
me also came then the two questions : How do I know 
that there is a God at all f and How am I to know that 
such a man as Jesus ever lived? I could answer neither. 
But in the mean time I was reading the story — was 
drawn to the Man there presented, and was trying to 
understand his being, and character, and principles of 
life and action. And, to sum all in a word, many 
months had not passed ere I had forgotten to seek an 
answer to either question : they were in fact questions 
no longer : I had seen the man Jesus Christ, and in him 
had known the Father of him and of me. My dear sir, 
no conviction can be got, or if it could be got, would be 
of any sufficing value, through that dealer in second- 
hand goods, the intellect. If by it we could prove there 
is a God, it would be of small avail indeed : we must see 
him and know him, to know that he was not a demon. 
But I know no other way of knowing that there is a 
God but that which reveals what he is — the only idea 
that could be God — shows him in his own self-proving 
existence — and that way is Jesus Christ as he revealed 
himself on earth, and as he is revealed afresh to every 
heart that seeks to know the truth concerning him.” 


ii6 • 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


A pause followed — a solemn one — and then again Pol- 
warth spoke. 

“ Either the whole frame of existence,” he said, “ is a 
wretched, miserable unfitness, a chaos with dreams of a 
world, a chaos in which the higher is forever subject to 
the lower, or it is an embodied idea growing towards 
perfection in him who is the one perfect creative Idea, 
the Father of lights, who suffers himself that he may 
bring his many sons into the glory which is his own 
glory.” 


/ 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 

T,” said Wingfold, “ — only pray do not think 
I am opposing you ; I am in the straits you 
have left so far behind — how am I to know 
that I should not merely have wrought my- 
self up to the believing of that which I should like to be 
true.?*' 

“ Leave that question, my dear sir, until you know 
what that really is which you want to believe. Ido not 
imagine that you have yet more than the merest glim- 
mer of the nature of that concerning which you, for 
the very reason that you know not what it is, most ra- 
tionally doubt. Is a man to refuse to withdraw his 
curtains lest some flash in his own eyes should deceive 
him with a vision of morning while yet it is night ? The 

i 

truth to the soul is as light to the eyes : you may be 
deceived, and mistake something else for light, but you 
can never fail to know the light when it really comes.” 

“ What then would you have of me ? What am I to 
cfof” said Wingfold, who, having found his master, was 




ii8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


docile as a child, but had not laid firm enough hold upon 
what he had last said. 

“ I repeat,” said Polwarth, “ that the community whose 
servant you are was not founded to promulgate or de- 
fend the doctrine of the existence of a Deity, but to per- 
petuate the assertion of a man that he was the son and 
only revealer of the Father of men, a fact, if it be a fact, 
which precludes the question of the existence of a God, 
because it includes the answer to it. Your business, 
therefore, even as one who finds himself in your un- 
fortunate position as a cergyman, is to make yourself 
acquainted with that man : he will be to you nobody 
save in revealing, through knowledge of his inmost 
heart, the Father to you. Take then your New Testa- 
ment as if you had never seen it before, and read — to 
find out. If in him you fail to meet God, then go to 
your consciousness of the race, your metaphysics, your 
Plato, your Spinosa. Till then, this point remains : 
there was a man who said he knew him, and that if you 
would give heed to him you too should know him. The 
record left of him is indeed scanty, yet enough to dis- 
close what manner of man he was — his principles, his 
ways of looking at things, his thoughts of his Father 
and his brethren and the relations between them, of 
man’s business in life, his destiny, and his hopes.” 

“ I see plainly,” answered the curate, “ that what you 
say I must do. But how, while on duty as a clergyman, 
I do nothiow. How am I, with the sense of the unreality 
of my position ever growing upon me, and my utter 
inability to supply the wants of the congregation save 


THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. II9 


from my uncle’s store of dry provender, which it takes 
me a great part of my time so to modify as, in using it, 
to avoid direct lying — with all this pressing upon me, 
and making me restless and irritable and self-contemp- 
tuous, how am I to set myself to' such solemn work, 
wherein a man must surely be clear-eyed and single- 
hearted if he would succeed in his quest ? I must re- 
sign my curacy." 

Mr. Polwarth thought a little. 

It would be well, I think, to retain it for a time at 
least while you search," he said. “ If yoii do not within 
a month see prospect of finding Him, then resign. In 
any case, your continuance in the service must depend 
on your knowledge of the Lord of it, and his will con- 
cerning you." 

“ May not a prejudice in favor of my profession blind 
and deceive me ?’’ 

“ I think it will rather make you doubtful of conclu- 
sions that support it.” 

“ I will go and try," said Wingfold, rising ; “ but I 
fear I am not the man to make discoveries in such high 
regions." 

“ You are the man to find what fits your own need if 
the thing be there,” said Polwarth. “ But to ease your 
mind for the task ; I know pretty well some of our best 
English writers of the more practical and poetic sort 
in theology— the two qualities go together— and if 
you will do me the favor to come again to-morrow, 
I shall be able, I trust, to provide you wherewithal 
to feed your flock, free of that duplicity which, be 


120 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


it as common as the surplice, and as fully connived 
as laughed at by that flock, is yet duplicity. There is 
no law that sermons shall be the preacher’s own, but 
there is an eternal law against all manner of humbug. 
Pardon the word.” “ 

“ I will not attempt to thank you,” said Wingfold, “ but 
I will do as you tell me. You are the first real friend I 
have ever had — except my brother, who is dead.” 

“ Perhaps you have had more friends than you are 
aware of. You owe something to the man, for instance, 
who, with his outspoken antagonism, roused you first 
to a sense of what was lacking to you.” 

“ I hope I shall be grateful to God for it some day,*’ 
returned Wingfold. “ I can not say that I feel much 
obligation to Mr. Bascombe. And yet, when I think of 
it — perhaps — I don’t know — what ought a man to be 
more grateful for than honesty ?” 

After a word of arrangement for next day the curate 
took his leave, assuredly with a stronger feeling of 
simple genuine respect than he had ever yet felt for man. 
Rachel bade him good night with her fine eyes filled with 
tears, which suited their expression, for they always 
seemed to be looking through sorrow to something be- 
yond it. 

“ If this be a type of the way the sins of the fathers 
are visited upon the children,” said the curate to him- 
self, “ there must be more in the progression of history 
than political economy can explain. It would drive us 
to believe in an economy wherein rather the well-being 
of the whole was the result of individual treatment, and 


THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 


I2I 


not the well-being of the individual the result of the 
management of the whole 

I will not count the milestones along the road on 
which Wingfold now began to journey. Some of the 
stages, however, will appear in the course of my story. 
When he came to any stiff bit of collar-work, the little 
man generally appeared with an extra horse. Every day 
during the rest of that week ne saw nis new friends. 


CHAPTER XX, 


A STRANGE SERMON. 

N the Sunday the curate walked across the 
churchyard to morning prayer very much as 
if the bells instead of ringing the people to 
church had been tolling for his execution. 
But if he was going to be hanged, he would at least die 
like a gentleman, confessing his sin. Only he would it 
were bedtime and all well. He trembled so when he 
stood up to read that he could not tell whether or not 
he was speaking in a voice audible to the congregation. 
But as his hour drew near, the courage to meet it drew 
near also, and when at length he ascended the pulpit 
stairs, he was able to cast a glance across the sea of 
heads to learn whether the little man was in the poor 
seats. But he looked for the big head in vain. 

When he read his text, it was to a congregation as 
listless and indifferent as it was wont to be. He had 
not gone far, however, before that change of mental 
condition was visible on the faces before him, which a 
troop of horses would have shown by a general forward 
swivelling of the ears. Wonderful to tell, they were 



A STRANGE SERMON. 


123 


actually listening. But in truth it was no wonder, for 
seldom in any, and assuredly never in that church, had 
there been heard such an exordium to a sermon. 

His text was, “ Confessing- your faults one to another'' 
Having read it with a return of the former trem- 
bling, and paused, his brain suddenly seemed for a 
moment to reel under a wave of extinction that struck 
it, then to float away upon it, and then to dissolve in it, 
as it interpenetrated its whole mass, annihilating 
thought and utterance together. But with a mighty 
effort of the will, in which he seemed to come as hear 
as man could come to the willing of his own existence, 
he recovered himself and went on. To do justice to 
this effort, my reader must remember that he was a 
shy man, and that he knew his congregation but too 
well for an unsympathetic one — whether from their 
fault or his own mattered little for the -nonce. It had 
been hard enough to make up his mind to the attempt 
when alone in his study, or rather, to tell the truth, in 
his chamber, but to carry out his resolve in the face of 
so many faces, and in spite of a cowardly brain, was an 
effort and a victory indeed. Yet after all, upon second 
thoughts, I see that the true resolve was the victory, 
sweeping shyness and every other opposing weakness 
along with it. But it wanted courage of yet another sort 
to make of his resolve a fact, and his courage, in that kind 
as well, had never yet been put to the test or trained by 
trial. He had not been a fighting boy at school ; he had 
never had the chance of riding to hounds ; he had never 
been in a shipwreck or a house on fire ; had never been 


124 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. . 


waked from a sound sleep with a demand for his watch 
and money ; yet one who had passed creditably through 
all these trials might still have carried a doubting con- 
science to his grave rather than face what Wingfold 
now confronted. 

From the manuscript before him he read thus : 

“ ‘ Confess your faults one to another.' — This com- 
mand of the apostle, my hearers, ought to justify me in 
doing what I fear some of you may consider almost as 
a breach of morals — talking of myself in the pulpit. 
But in the pulpit has a wrong been done, and in the 
pulpit shall it be confessed. From Sunday to Sunday, 
standing on this spot, I have read to you, without word 
of explanation, as if they formed the message I had 
sought and found for you, the thoughts and words of 
another. Doubtless they were better than any I could 
have given you from my own mind or experience, and 
the act had been a righteous one, had I told you the 
truth concerning them. But that truth I did not tell 
you. At last, through words of honest expostulation, 
the voice of a friend whose wounds are faithful, I have 
been aroused to a knowledge of the wrong I have been 
doing. Therefore I now confess it. I am sorry. I will 
do so no more. 

“ But, brethren, I have only a little garden on a bare 
hillside, and it hath never yet borne me any fruit fit to 
offer for your acceptance ; also, my heart is troubled 
about many things, and God hath humbled me. I beg 
of you, therefore, to bear with me for a little while, if, 
doing what is but lawful and expedient both, I break 


A STRANGE SERMON. 


25 


through the bonds of custom in order to provide you 
with food convenient for you. Should I fail in this, I 
shall make room for a better man. But for your bread 
of this day, I go gleaning openly in other men’s fields — • 
fields into which I could not have found my way, in time 
at least for your necessities, and where I could not have 
gathered such full ears of wheat, barley, and oats but 
for the more than assistance of the same friend who 
warned me of the wrong I was doing both you and my- 
self. Right ancient fields are some of them, where yet 
the ears lie thick for the gleaner. To continue my 
metaphor ; I will lay each handful before you with the 
name of the field where I gathered it ; and together they 
will serve to show what some of the wisest and best 
shepherds of the English flock have believed concerning 
the duty of confessing our faults.” 

He then proceeded to read the extracts which Mr. 
Polwarth had helped him to find — and arrange, not 
chronologically, but after an idea of growth. Each 
handful, as he called it, he prefaced with one or two 
words concerning him in whose field he had gleaned it. 

His voice steadied and strengthened as he read. Re- 
newed contact with the minds of those vanished teachers 
gave him a delight which infused itself into the uttered 
words, and made them also joyful ; and if the curate 
preached to no one else in the congregation, certainly 
he preached to himself, and before it was done had 
entered into a thorough enjoyment of the sermon. 

A few of the congregation were disappointed because 
they had looked for a justification and enforcement of 


126 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


the confessional, thinking the change in the curate 
could only have come from that portion of the ecclesi- 
astical heavens towards which they themselves turned 
their faces. A few others were scandalized at such an 
innovation on the part of a young man who was only a 
curate. Many, however, declared that it was the most 
interesting sermon they had ever heard in their lives — 
which perhaps was not saying much. 

Mrs. Ramshorn made a class by herself. Not having 
yet learned to like Wingfold, and being herself one of 
the craft, with a knowledge of not a few of the secrets 
of the clerical — prison-house shall I call it, or green- 
room ? — she was indignant with the presumptuous young 
man who degraded the pulpit to a level with the dock. 
Who cared for him } What was it to a congregation of 
respectable people, many of them belonging to the first 
county-families, that he, a mere curate, should have 
committed what he fancied a crime against them ! He 
should have waited until it had been laid to his charge. 
Couldn’t he repent of his sins, whatever they were, 
without making a boast of them in the pulpit, and ex- 
posing them to the eyes of a whole congregation ? She 
had known people make a stock-in-trade of their sins ! 
What was it to them whether the washy stuff he gave 
them by way of sermons was his own foolishness or 
some other noodle’s ! Nobody would have troubled 
himself to inquire into his honesty if he had but held 
his foolish tongue. Better men than he had preached 
other people’s sermons, and never thought it worth men- 
tioning. And what worse were the people ? The only 


A STRANGE SERMON. 


127 


harm lay in letting them know, it ; that brought the pro- 
fession into disgrace, and prevented the good the sermon 
would otherwise have done, besides giving the enemies 
of the truth a handle against the church. And then 
such a thing to call a sermon ! As well take a string of 
blown eggs to market ! Thus she expatiated, half the 
way home, before either of her companions found an 
opportunity of saying a word. 

“ I am sorry to differ from you, aunt,” said Helen. “ I 
thought the sermon a very interesting one. He read 
beautifully.” 

“ For my part,” said Bascombe, who was now a regu- 
lar visitor from Saturdays to Mondays, “ I used to think 
the fellow a muff, but, by Jove ! I’ve changed my mind. 
If ever there was a plucky thing to do, that was one, 
and there ain’t many men, let me tell you, aunt, who 
would have the pluck for it. — It’s my belief, Helen,” he 
went on, turning to her and speaking in a lower tone, 
“ I’ve had the honor of doing that fellow some good. 
I gave him my mind about honesty pretty plainly the 
first time I saw him. And who can tell what may come 
next when a fellow once starts in the right way ! We 
shall have him with us before long. I must look out 
for something for him, for of course he’ll be in a devil 
of a fix without his profession.” 

“ I’m so glad you think with me, George !” said He- 
len. “ There was always something I was inclined to 
like about Mr. Wingfold. Indeed I should have liked 
him quite if he had not been so painfully modest.” 

“ Notwithstanding his sheepishness, though,” return- 


128 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ed Bascombe, “ there was a sort of quiet self-satisfaction 
about him, and the way he always said Don't you think? 
as if he were Socrates taking advantage of Mr. Green 
and softly guiding him into a trap, which I confess 
made me set him down as conceited ; but, as I say, I 
begin to change my mind. By Jove ! he must have 
worked pretty hard too in the dust-bins to get together 
all those bits of gay rag and resplendent crockery !" 

“You heard him say he had help,” 

“ No, I don’t remember that.” 

“ It came just after that pretty simile about gleaning 
in old fields.” 

“ I remember the simile, for I thought it a very ab- 
surd one — as if fields would lie gleanable for genera- 
tions !” 

“To be sure — now you point it out!” acquiesced 
Helen. 

“ The grain would have sprouted and borne harvests 
a hundred. If a man will use figures, he should be 
careful to give them legs. I wonder who he got to help 
him — not the rector, I suppose ?” 

“ The rector !” echoed Mrs. Ramshorn, who had been 
listening to the young people’s remarks with a smile of 
quiet scorn on her lip, thinking what an advantage was 
experience, even if it could not make up for the loss of 
youth and beauty — “ the last man in the world to lend 
himself to such a miserable makeshift and pretence ! 
Without brains enough even to fancy himself able to 
write a sermon of his own, he flies to the dead, — to their 
very coffin as it were — and I will not say steals from 


A STRANGE SERMON. 


129 


them, for he does it openly, not having even shame 
enough to conceal his shame !” 

“ I like a man to hold his face to what he does, or 
thinks either,” said Bascombe. 

“ Ah ! George,” returned his aunt, in tones of wisdom, 
“ by the time you have had my experience you will 
have learned a little prudence.” 

Meantime, so far as his aunt was concerned, George 
did use prudence, for in her presence he did not hold 
his face to what he thought. He said to himself it 
would do her no good. She was so prejudiced ! and it 
might interfere with his visits. She, for her part, never 
had the slightest doubt of his orthodoxy : was he not 
the son of a clergyman and canon — a grandson ot the 
church herself ? 


CHAPTER XXI. 


A ‘THUNDERBOLT. 



OMETIMES a thunderbolt, as men call it, will 
shoot from a clear sky ; and sometimes, into 
the midst of a peaceful family, or a yet 
quieter individuality, without warning of 
gathered storm above or slightest tremble of earth- 
quake beneath, will fall a terrible fact, and from the 
moment every thing is changed. That family or that 
life is no more what it was — probably never more can 
be what it was. Better it ought to be, worse it may be 
— which, depends upon itself. But its spiritual weather 
is altered. The air is thick with cloud, and can not weep 
itself clear. There may come a gorgeous sunset, though. 

It were a truism for one who believes in God to say 
that such catastrophes, so rending, so frightful, never 
come but where they are needed. The Power of Life is 
not content that they who live in and by him should 
live poorly and contemptibly. If the presence of low 
thoughts which he repudiates, yet makes a man misera- 
ble, how must it be with him if they who live and move 


A THUNDERBOLT. 


I3I 


and have their being in him are mean and repulsive, or 
alienated through self-sufficiency and slowness of heart ? 

I can not report much progress in Helen during the 
months of winter and spring. But if one wakes at last, 
wakes at all, who shall dare cast the stone at him — that' 
he ought to have awaked sooner.? What man who is 
awake will dare to say that he roused himself the first 
moment it became possible to him ? The main and plain 
and worst, perhaps only condemnation, is — that when 
people do wake they do not get up. At the same time, 
however, I can hardly doubt that Helen was keeping 
the law of a progress slow as the growth of an iron-tree. 

Nothing had ever yet troubled her. She had never 
been in love, could hardly be said to be in love now. 
She went regularly to church, and I believe said her 
prayers night and morning — yet felt no indignation at 
the doctrines and theories propounded by George Bas- 
combe. She regarded them as “ George’s ideas,” and 
never cared to ask whether they were true or not, at 
the same time that they were becoming to her by de- 
grees as like truth as falsehood can ever be. For to the 
untruthful mind the false ca7t seem the true. Meantime 
she was not even capable of giving him the credit he 
deserved, in that, holding the opinions he held, he yet 
advocated a life spent for the community— without, as I 
presume, deriving much inspiration thereto from what 
he himself would represent as the ground of all consci- 
entious action, the consideration, namely, of its reaction 
upon its originator. Still farther was it from entering 
the field of hef vision that possibly some of the good 


132 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


which distinguished George’s unbelief from that of his 
brother ephemera of the last century was owing to the 
deeper working of that leaven which he denounced 
as the poisonous root whence sprung all the evil dis- 
eases that gnawed at the heart of society. 

One night she sat late, making her aunt a cap. The 
one sign of originality in her was the character of 
her millinery, of which kind of creation she was fond, 
displaying therein both invention as to form and per- 
ception as to effect, combined with lightness and deft- 
ness of execution. She was desirous of completing it 
before the next morning, which was that of her aunt’s 
birthday. They had had friends to dine with them who 
had stayed rather late, and it was now getting towards 
one o’clock. But Helen was not easily tired, and was not 
given to abandoning what she had undertaken ; so she 
sat working away, and thinking, not of George Bas- 
combe, but of one whom she loved better— far better — 
her brother Leopold. But she was thinking of him not 
quite so comfortably as usual. Certain anxieties she 
had ground for concerning him had grown stronger, for 
the time since she heard from him had grown very long. 

All at once her work ceased, her hands were arrested, 
her posture grew rigid ; she was listening. Had she 
heard a noise outside her window ? 

My reader may remember that it opened on a balco- 
ny, which was at the same time the roof of a veranda 
that went along the back of the house, and had a stair 
at one end to the garden. 

Helen was not easily frightened, and had stopped her 


A THUNDERBOLT. 


133 


needle only that she might listen the better. She heard 
nothing. Of course it was but a fancy ! Her hands 
went on again with their work. — But that was really 
very like a tap at the window ! And now her heart did 
beat a little faster, if not with fear, then with something 
very like it, in which perhaps some foreboding was 
mingled. But she was not a woman to lay down her 
arms upon the inroad of a vague terror. She quietly 
rose, and, saying to herself it must be one of the pigeons 
that haunted the balcony, laid her work on the table, 
and went to the window. As she drew one of the cur- 
tains a little aside to peep, the tap was plainly and hur- 
riedly though softly repeated, and at once she swept it 
back. There was the dim shadow of a man's head upon 
the blind, cast there by an old withered moon low in the 
west ! Perhaps it was something in the shape of the 
shadow that made her pull up the blind so hurriedly, and 
yet with something of the awe with which we take “ the 
face-cloth from the face.” Yes, there was a face ! — 
frightful, not as that of a corpse, but as that of a spec- 
tre from whose soul the scars of his mortal end have 
never passed away. Helen did not scream — her throat 
seemed to close and her heart to cease. But her eyes 
continued movelessly fixed on the face even after she 
knew it was the face of her brother, and the eyes of the 
face kept staring back into hers through the glass with 
such a look of concentrated eagerness that they seemed 
no more organs of vision but caves of hunger, nor was 
there a movement of the lips towards speech. The two 
gazed at each other for a moment of rigid silence. The 


134 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


glass that separated them might have been the veil that 
divides those who call themselves the living from those 
whom they call the dead. 

It was but a moment by the clock, though to the 
after consciousness it seemed space immeasurable. She 
came to herself, and slowly, noiselessly, though with 
tremulous hand, undid the sash and opened the window. 
Nothing divided them now, yet he stood as before, star- 
ing into her face. Presently his lips began to move, 
but no words came from them. 

In Helen horror had already roused the instinct of se- 
crecy. She put out her two hands, took his face be- 
tween them, and said in a hurried whisper, calling him 
by the pet name she had given him when a child, 

“ Come in, Poldie, and tell me all about it." 

Her voice seemed to wake him. Slowly, with the 
movements of one half paralyzed, he shoved and drag- 
ged himself over the window-sill, dropped himself on 
the floor inside, and lay there, looking up in her face 
like a hunted animal, that hoped he had found a refuge, 
but doubted. Seeing him so exhausted, she turned 
from him to go and get some brandy, but a low cry of 
agony drew her back. His head was raised from the 
floor and his hands were stretched out, while his face 
entreated her, as plainly as if he had spoken, not to 
leave him. She knelt and would have kissed him, but 
he turned his face from her with an expression which, 
seemed of disgust. 

“ Poldie,” she said, “ I ynustgo and get you something. 
Don’t be afraid. They are all sound asleep.” 


A THUNDERBOLT. 


135 


The grasp with which he had clutched her dress re- 
laxed, and his hand fell by his side. She rose at once 
and went, creeping through the slumberous house, light 
and noiseless as a shadow, but with a heart that seemed 
not her own lying hard in her bosom. As she went she 
had to struggle to rouse and compose herself, for she 
could not think. An age seemed to have passed since 
she heard the clock strike twelve. One thing was clear 
— her brother had been doing something wrong, and 
dreading discovery had fled to her. The moment this 
conviction made itself plain to her she drew herself up 
with the great deep breath of a vow, as strong as it was 
silent and undefined, that he should not have come to her 
in vain. Silent-footed as a beast of prey, silent-handed as 
a thief, lithe in her movements, her eye flashing with 
the new-kindled instinct of motherhood to the or- 
phan of her father, it was as if her soul had been sud- 
denly raised to a white heat, which rendered her body 
elastic and responsive. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


LEOPOLD. 

HE re-entered her room with the gait of a 
new-born goddess treading the air. Her 
brother was yet prostrate where she had left 
him. He raised himself on his elbow, seized 
with trembling hand the glass she offered him, swal- 
lowed the brandy at a gulp, and sank again on the 
floor. The next instant he sprang to his feet, cast a 
terrified look at the window, bounded to the door and 
locked it, then ran to his sister, threw his arms about 
her, and clung to her like a trembling child. But ever 
his eyes kept turning to the window. 

Though now twenty years of age, and at his full 
height, he Was hardly so tall as Helen. Swarthy of 
complexion, his hair dark as the night, his eyes large 
and lustrous, With What Milton calls ‘ quel sereno ful- 
gor d' amabil nero,’ his frame nervous and slender, he 
looked compact and small beside her. 

She did her utmost to quiet him, unconsciously using 
the same words and tones with which she had soothed his 
passions when he was a child. All at once he raised his 



LEOPOLD. 


137 


head and drew himself back from her arms with a look 
of horror, then put his handover his eyes as if her face 
had been a mirror and he had seen himself in it. 

“ What is that on your wristband, Leopold ?” she 
asked. “ Have you hurt yourself ?” 

The youth cast an indescribable look on his hand, but 
it was not that which turned Helen so deadly sick : 
with her question had come to her the ghastly suspi- 
cion that the blood she saw was not his, and she 
felt guilty of an unpardonable, wicked wrong against 
him. But she would never, never believe it ! A sister 
suspect her only brother of such a crime ! Yet her 
arms dropped and let him go. She stepped back a pace, 
and of themselves, as it were, her eyes went wandering 
and questioning all over him, and saw that his clothes 
were torn and soiled— stained — who could tell with 
what ? 

He stood for a moment still and submissive to their 
search, with face downcast. Then, suddenly flashing 
his eyes on her, he said, in a voice that seemed to force 
its way through earth that choked it back, 

“ Helen, I am a murderer, and they are aftet me. 
They will be here before daylight.’* 

He dropped on his knees^ and clasped hers, 

“ O sister ! sister ! save me, save me !” he cried in a 
voice of agony. 

Helen stood without tesponse, for to stand took all 
her strength. How long she fought that horrible sick- 
ness, knowing that, if she moved an inch, turned from 
it a moment, yielded a hair’s-breadth, it would throw 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


138 


her senseless on the floor and the noise of her fall 
would rouse the house, she never could even conjec- 
ture. All was dark before her, as if her gaze had been 
on the under side of her coffin-lid, and her brain sank 
and swayed and swung in the coils of the white snake 
that was sucking at her heart. At length the darkness 
thinned ; it grew a gray mist ; the face of her boy-bro- 
ther glimmered up through it, like that of Dives in hell- 
fire to his guardian-angel as he hung lax-winged and faint 
in the ascending smoke. The mist thinned, and at 
length she caught a glimmer of his pleading, despairing, 
self-horrified eyes : all the mother in her nature rushed 
to the aid of her struggling will ; her heart gave a great 
heave ; the blood ascended to her white brain, and 
flushed it with rosy life ; her body was once more re- 
conciled and obedient ; her hands went forth, took his 
head between them, and pressed it against her. 

‘‘ Poldie', dear,” she said, “ be calm and reasonable, 
and I will do all I can for you. Here, take this. — And 
now, answer me one question.” 

“ You won’t give me up, Helen ?” 

“No. I will not.” 

“ Swear it, Helen.” 

“ Ah ! my poor Poldie, is it come to this between 
you and me ?” 

“ Swear it, Helen.” 

“ So help me God, I will not !” murmured Helen, 
looking up. 

Leopold rose, and again stood quiet before her, but 


LEOPOLD. 


139 


again with down-bent head, like a prisoner about to re- 
ceive sentence. 

“ Do you mean what you said a moment since — that 
the police are in search of you ?” asked Helen with 
forced calmness. 

“ They must be. They must have been after me for 
days — I don’t know how many. They will be here soon. 
I can’t think how I have escaped them so long. Hark ! 
Isn’t that a noise at the street-door } No, no ! There’s a 
shadow on the curtains! No! it’s my eyes; they’ve 
cheated me a thousand times. Helen ! I did not try to 
hide her ; they must have found her long ago.” 

“My God!” cried Helen, but checked the scream 
that sought to follow the cry. 

“ There was an old shaft near,” he went on hurriedly. 

If I had thrown her down that they would never have 
found her, for there must be choke-damp at the bottom 
of it enough to kill a thousand of them. But I could 
not bear the thought of sending the lovely thing down 
there — even to save my life.” 

He was growing wild again, but the horror had again 
laid hold upon Helen, and she stood .speechless, staring 
at him. 

“ Hide me, hide me, Helen !” he pleaded. “ Perhaps 
you think I am mad. Would to God I were ! Some- 
times I think I must be. But this I tell you is no mad- 
man’s fancy. If you take it for that, you will bring me 
to the gallows. — So, if you will see me hanged — ” 

He sat down and folded his arms. 

“ Hush, Poldie, hush !” cried Helen, in an agonized 


140 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


whisper. I am only thinking what I can best do. I 
can not hide you here, for if my aunt knew, she would 
betray you by her terrors ; and if she did not know, and 
those men came, she would help them to search every 
corner of the house. Otherwise there might be a 
chance.” 

Again she was silent for a few moments, then, seem- 
ing suddenly to have made up her mind, went softly to 
the door. 

“ Don’t leave me !” cried Leopold. 

“ Hush ! I must. I know now what to do. Be quiet 
here until I come back.” 

Slowly, cautiously, she unlocked it, and left the room. 
In three or four minutes she returned, carrying a loaf 
of bread and a bottle of wine. To her dismay Leopold 
had vanished. Presently he came creeping out from 
under the bed, looking so abject that Helen could not 
help a pang of shame. But the next moment the love 
of the sister, the tender compassion of the woman, re- 
turned in full tide and swallowed up the unsightly thing. 
The more abject he was the more was he to be pitied 
and ministered to. 

“ Here, Poldie,” she said, “ you carry the bread, and I 
will take the wine. You must eat something, or you 
will be ill.” 

As she spoke, she locked the door again. Then she 
put a dark shawl over her head, and fastened it under 
her chin. Her white face shone out from it like the 
moon from a dark cloud. 

“ Follow me, Poldie,” she said, and putting out the 


LEOPOLD. 


I4I 


candles, went to the window. He obeyed without ques- 
tion, carrying the loaf she had put into his hands. The 
window-sash rested on a little door ; she opened it, and 
stepped on the balcony. As soon as her brother had 
followed her, she closed it again, drew down the sash, 
and led the way to the garden, and so, by the door in the 
sunk fence, out upon the meadows- 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE REFUGE. 

HE night was very dusky, but Helen knew 
perfectly the way she was going. A strange 
excitement possessed her, and lifted her 
above all personal fear. The instant she 
found herself in the open air, her faculties seemed 
to come preternaturally awake, and her judgment 
to grow quite cool. She congratulated herself that 
there had been no rain, and the ground would not 
betray their steps. There was enough of light in the 
sky to see the trees against it, and partly by their out- 
lines she guided herself to the door in the park-paling, 
whence she went as straight as she could for the desert- 
ed house. Remembering well her brother’s old dislike 
to the place, she said nothing of their destination, but 
when he suddenly stopped, she knew that it had dawned 
upon him. For one moment he hung back, but a 
stronger and more definite fear lay behind, and he 
went on. 

Emerging from the trees on the edge of the hollow, 
they looked down, but it was too dark to see the mass 



THE REFUGE. 


143 


of the house, or the slightest gleam from the surface of 
the lake. All was silent as a deserted churchyard, and 
they went down the slope as if it had been the descent 
to Hades. Arrived at the wall of the garden, they fol- 
lowed its buttressed length until they came to a tall 
narrow gate of wrought iron, almost consumed with 
rust, and standing half open. By this they passed into 
the desolate garden, whose misery in the daytime was 
like that of a ruined soul, but now hidden in the night’s 
black mantle. Through the straggling bushes with 
their arms they forced and with their feet they felt their 
way to the front door of the house, the steps to which, 
from the effects of various floods, were all out of the 
level in different directions. The door was unlocked as 
usual, needing only a strong push to open it, and they 
entered. How awfully still it seemed ! — much stiller 
than the open air, though that had seemed noiseless. 
There was not a rat or a black beetle in the place. They 
groped their way through the hall and up the wide 
staircase, which gave not one creak in answer to their 
needlessly careful footsteps : not a soul was within a mile 
of them. Helen had taken Leopold by the hand, and 
she now led him straight to the closet whence the hid- 
den room opened. He made no resistance, for the 
covering wings of the darkness had protection in them. 
How desolate must the soul be that welcomes such pro- 
tection ! But when, knowing that thence no ray could 
reach the outside, she struck a light, and the spot where 
he had so often shuddered was laid bare to his soul, he 
gave a cry and turned and would have rushed away. 


, 14 + 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Helen caught him ; he yielded, and allowed her to lead 
him into the room. There she lighted a candle, and as 
it came gradually alive, it shed a pale yellow light 
around, and revealed a bare chamber with a bedstead 
and the remains of a moth-eaten mattress in a corner. 
Leopold threw himself upon it, uttering a sound that 
more resembled a choked scream than a groan. Helen 
sat down beside him, took his head on her lap, and 
sought to soothe him with such tender loving words as 
had never before found birth in her heart, not to say 
crossed her lips. She took from her pocket a dainty 
morsel, and tried to make him eat, but in vain. Then 
she poured him out a cupful of wine. He drank it 
eagerly, and asked for more, which she would not give 
him. But instead of comforting him, it seemed only to 
rouse him to fresh horror. He clung to his sister as a 
child clings to the nurse who has just been telling him 
an evil tale, and ever his face would keep turning from 
her to the door with a look of frightful anticipation. 
She consoled him with all her ingenuity, assured him 
that for the present he was perfectly safe, and, thinking 
it would encourage a sense of concealment, reminded 
him of the trap in the floor of the closet and the little 
chamber underneath. But at that he started up with 
glaring eyes. 

“ Helen ! I remember now,” he cried. “ I knew it at 
the time ! Don’t you know I never could endure the 
place ? I foresaw, as plainly as I see you now, that one 
day I should be crouching here for safety with a hideous 


THE REFUGE. 


145 


crime on my conscience. I told you so. Helen, at the 
time. Oh ! how could you bring me here ?” 

He threw himself down again, and hid his face on her 
lap. 

With a fresh inroad of dismay Helen thought he must 
be going mad, for this was the merest trick of his imagi- 
nation. Certainly he had always dreaded the place, but 
never a word of that sort had he said to her. Yet there 
was a shadow of possible comfort in the thought — for 
what if the whole thing should prove ah hallucination ! 
But whether real or not, she must have his story. 

“ Come, dearest Poldie, darling brother !" she said, 
“ you have not yet told me what it is. What is the ter- 
rible thing you have done ? I dare say it’s nothing so 
very bad after all !” 

“ There’s the light coming !” he said in a dull hollow 
voice, “ — the morning ! always the morning coming 
again !” 

“ No, no, dear Poldie !” she returned. ‘‘There is no 
window here — at least it only looks on the back stair, 
high above heads ; and the morning is a long way off.” 

“ How far?” he asked, staring in her eyes ; “ twenty 
years ? That was just when I was born ! Oh ! that I 
could enter a second time into my mother’s womb, and 
never be born ! Why are we sent into this cursed 
world ? I would God had never made it. What was the 
good ? Couldn’t he have let well alone ?” 

He was silent. She must get him to sleep. 

It was as if a second soul had been given her to sup- 
plement the first, and enable her to meet what would 


146 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


otherwise have been the exorbitant demands now made 
upon her. With an effort of the will such as she could 
never before have even imagined, she controlled the 
anguish of her own spirit, and, softly stroking the head 
of the poor lad, which had again sought her lap, com- 
pelled herself to sing him for lullaby a song of which in 
his childhood he had been very fond, and with which, in 
all the importance of imagined motherhood, she had 
often sung him to sleep. And the old influence was 
potent yet. In a few minutes the fingers which clutched 
her hand relaxed, and she knew by his breathing that 
he slept. She sat still as a stone, not daring to move, 
hardly daring breath enough to keep her alive, lest she 
should rouse him from his few blessed moments of self- 
nothingness, during which the tide of the all-infolding 
ocean of peace was free to flow into the fire-torn cave 
of his bosom. She sat motionless thus, until it seemed 
as if for very weariness she must drop in a heap on the 
floor, but that the aches and pains which went through 
her in all directions held her body together like ties and 
rivets. She had never before known what weariness 
was, and now she knew it for all her life. But like an 
irritant, her worn body clung about her soul and dulled 
it to its own grief, thus helping it to a pitiful kind of re- 
pose. How long she sat thus she could not tell — she 
had no means of knowing, but it seemed hours on hours, 
and yet, though the nights were now short, the dark- 
ness had not begun to thin. But when she thought 
how little access the light had to that room, she began to 
grow uneasy lest she should be missed from her own, 


THE REFUGE. 


147 


or seen on her way back to it. At length some in- 
voluntary movement woke him. He started to his feet 
with a look of wild gladness. But there was scarcely 
time to recognize it before it vanished. 

“ My God, it is true, then !” he shrieked. “ O Helen ! 
I dreamed that I was innocent — that I had but dreamed 
I had done it. .Tell me that I’m dreaming now. Tell 
me ! tell me ! Tell me that I am no murderer !” 

As he spoke he seized her shoulder with a fierce 
grasp, and shook her as if trying to wake her from the 
silence of ai lethargy. 

“ I hope you are innocent, my darling. But in any 
case I will do all I can to protect you,” said Helen. 
“ Only I shall never be able unless you control yourself 
sufficiently to let me go home.” 

“ No, Helen !” he cried ; “ you must not leave me. If 
you do, I shall go mad. She will come instead.” 

Helen shuddered inwardly, but kept her outward com- 
posure. 

“ If I stay with you, just think, dearest, what will 
happen,” she said. “ I shall be missed, and all the 
country will be raised to look for me. They will think 
I have been — .” She checked herself. 

“ And so you might be — so might any one,” he cried, 
“ so long as I am loose — like the Rajah’s man-eating 
horse. O God ! it has come to this !” And he hid his 
face in his hands. 

“And then you see, my Poldie,” Helen went on as 
calmly as she could, “ they would come here and find 
us ; and I don’t know what might come next.” 


148 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Yes, yes, Helen ! Go, go directly. Leave me this 
instant,” he said hurriedly, and took her by the shoul- 
ders, as if he would push her from the room, but went 
on talking. “ It must be, I know ; but when the light 
comes I shall go mad. Would to God I might, for the 
day is worse than the darkness ; then I see my own 
black against the light. Now go, Helen. But you will 
come back to me as soon as ever you can ? How shall 
I know when to begin to look for you } What o’clock 
is it ? My watch has never been — since — . Ugh ! 
the light will be here soon. Helen, I know not what 
hell is. — Ah ! yes.” As he spoke he had been feeling in 
one of his pockets. “ I will not be taken alive. — Can you 
whistle, Helen ?” 

“ Yes, Poldie,” answered Helen, trembling. “Don’t 
you remember teaching me 

“ Yes, yes. Then, when you come near the house, 
whistle, and go on whistling, for if I hear a step without 
any whistling I shall kill myself.” 

“ What have you got there T she asked, in renewed 
terror, noticing that he kept his hand in the breast- 
pocket of his coat. 

“ Only the knife,” he answered calmly. 

“ Give it to me,” she said, calmly too. 

He laughed, and the laugh was more terrible than any 
cry. 

“ No ; I’m not so green as that,” he said. “ My knife 
is my only friend ! Who is to take care of me when you 
are away ? Ha ! ha !” 

She saw that the comfort of the knife must not be 


THE REFUGE. 


149 


denied him. Nor did she fear any visit that might drive 
him to its use — except indeed the police were to come 
upon him — and then what better could he do } she 
thought. 

“ Well, well, I will not plague you,” she said. “ Lie 
down and I will cover you with my shawl, and you can 
fancy it my arms round you. I will come to you as 
soon as ever I can.” 

He obeyed. She spread her shawl over him and 
kissed him. 

“ Thank you, Helen,” he said quietly. 

“ Pray to God to deliver you, dear,” she said. 

“ He can do that only by killing me,” he returned. 
“ I will pray for that. But do you go, Helen, i will 
try to bear my misery for your sake.” 

He followed her from the room with eyes out of 
which looked the very demon of silent despair. 

I will not further attempt to set forth his feelings. 
The incredible, the impossible, had become a fact — and 
he was the man. He who knows the relief of waking 
from a dream of crime to the jubilation of recovered in' 
nocence, to the sunlight that blots out the thing as un- 
true, may by help of that conceive the misery of a deli- 
cate nature suddenly filled with the clear assurance of 
horrible guilt. Such a misery no waking but one that 
annihilated the past could ever console. Yes, there is 
yet an awaking — if a man might but attain unto it — an 
awaking into a region whose very fields are full of the 
harmony sovereign to console, not merely for having 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


150 


suffered — that needs little consoling — but for having 
inflicted the deepest wrong. 

The moment Helen was out of sight Leopold drew a 
small silver box from an inner pocket, eyed it with the 
eager look of a hungry animal, took from it a portion 
of a certain something, put it in his mouth, closed his 
eyes, and lay still. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


HELEN WITH A SECRET. 

HEN Helen came out into the corridor she saw 
that the day was breaking. A dim, dreary 
light filled the dismal house, but the candle 
had prevented her from perceiving the little 
of it that could enter that room withdrawn. A pang 
of fear shot to her soul, and like a belated spectre 
or a roused somnambulist she fled across the park. 
It was all so like a horrible dream, from which she must 
wake in bed ! yet she knew there was no such hope for 
her. Her darling lay in that frightful house, and if any 
one should see her it might be death to him. But it 
was yet very early, and two hours would pass before 
any of the workmen would be on their way to the new 
house. Yet, like a murderer shaken out of the earth by 
the light, she fled. When she was safe in her own 
room, ere she could get into bed, she once more turned 
deadly sick, and next knew by the agonies of coming to 
herself that she had fainted. 

A troubled, weary, excited sleep followed. She woke 
with many a start, as if she had sinned in sleeping, and 




152 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


instantly, for very weariness, dozed off a^ain. How 
kind is weariness sometimes ! It is like the Father’s 
hand laid a little heavy on the heart to make it still. 
But her dreams were full of torture, and even when she 
had no definite dream, she was haunted by the vague 
presence of blood. It was considerably past her usual 
time for rising when at length she heard her maid in 
the room. She got up wearily, but, beyond the heaviest 
of hearts and a general sense of misery, nothing ailed 
her ; nor even did her head ache. 

But she had lived an age since she woke last ; and the 
wonder was, not that she felt so different, but that she 
should be aware of being ^the same person as before 
notwithstanding all that had passed. Her business 
now was to keep herself from thinking until breakfast 
should be over. She must hold the “ ebony box” of 
last night close shut even from her own eyes, lest the 
demons of which it was full should rush out and darken 
the world about her. She hurried to her bath for 
strength ; the friendly water would rouse her to the 
present, make the past recede like a dream, and give her 
courage to face the future. Her very body seemed de- 
filed by the knowledge that was within it. Alas ! how 
must poor Leopold feel then ! But she must not think. 

All the time she was dressing her thoughts kept ho- 
vering round the awful thing like moths around a foul 
flame, from which she could not drive them away. 
Ever and again she said to herself that she must not, 
yet ever and again she found herself peeping through 
the chinks of the thought-chamber at the terrible thing 


HELEN WITH A SECRET. 


153 


inside — the form of which she could not see— saw only 
the color — red — red, mingled with ghastly whiteness. In 
all the world her best-loved, her brother, the child of 
her grand father, was the only one who knew how that 
thing came there. 

But while Helen’s being was in such tumult that she 
could never more be the cool, indifferent, self-content- 
ed person she had hitherto been, her old habits and 
forms of existence were now of endless help to the re- 
taining of her composure and the covering of her secret. 
A dim gleam of gladness woke in her at the sight of the 
unfinished cap, than which she could not have a better 
excuse for her lateness, and when she showed it to her 
aunt with the wish of many happy returns of the day, no 
second glance from Mrs. Ramshorn added to her un- 
easiness. 

But oh ! how terribly the time crept in its going ! for 
she dared not approach the deserted house while the 
daylight kept watching it like a dog. And what if 
Leopold should have destroyed himself in the madness 
of his despair before she could go to him ! She had not 
a friend to help her. George Bascombe ? — she shud- 
dered at the thought of him. With his grand ideas of 
duty, he would be for giving up Leopold that very mo- 
ment ! Naturally the clergyman was the one to go to 
— and Mr. Wingfold had himself done wrong. But he 
had confessed it ! No — he was a poor creature, and 
would not hold his tongue ! She shook at every knock 
at the door, every ring at the bell, lest it should be the 
police. To be sure he had been comparatively little 


154 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


there, and naturally they would seek him first at Golds- 
wyre ; but where next ? At Glaston, of course. Every 
time a servant entered the room she turned away lest 
her ears should make her countenance a traitor. The 
police might be watching the house, and might follow her 
when she went to him ! With her opera-glass she ex- 
amined the meadow, then ran to the bottom of the gar- 
den, and lying down, peered over the sunk fence. But 
not a human being was in sight. Next she put on her 
bonnet with the pretence of shopping, to see if there 
were any suspicious-looking persons in the street. But 
she did not meet a single person unknown to her be- 
tween her aunt s door and Mr. Drew the linen-draper’s. 
There she bought a pair of gloves, and walked quietly 
back, passing the house, and going on to the Abbey, 
without meeting one person at whom she had to look 
twice. 

All the time her consciousness was like a single in- 
tense point of light in the middle of a darkness it could 
do nothing to illuminate. She knew nothing but that 
her brother lay in that horrible empty house, and that, 
if his words were not the ravings of a maniac, the law, 
whether it yet suspected him or not, was certainly after 
him, and if it had not yet. struck upon his trail, was 
every moment on the point of finding it, and must 
sooner or later come up with him. She 7nust save him — 
all that was left of him to save ! But poor Helen knew 
very little about saving. 

One thing more she became suddenly aware of as she 
re-entered the house — the possession of a power of dis- 


HELEN WITH A SECRET. 


155 


simulation, of hiding herself, hitherto strange to her, 
for hitherto she had had nothing, hardly even a passing 
dislike, to conceal. The consciousness brought only ex- 
ultation with it, for her nature was not yet delicate 
enough to feel the jar of the thought that neither words 
nor looks must any more be an index to what lay 
within her. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


A DAYLIGHT VISIT. 

UT she could not rest. When would the wea- 
ry day be over, and the longed-for rather 
than welcome night appear ? Again she 
went into the garden, and down to the 
end of it, and looked out over the meadow. Not 
a creature was in sight except a red and white cow, a 
child gathering buttercups, and a few rooks crossing 
from one field to another. It was a glorious day ; the 
sun seemed the very centre of conscious peace. And 
now first, strange to say, Helen began to know the bliss 
of bare existence under a divine sky, in the midst of a 
divine air, the two making a divine summer, which 
throbbed with the presence of the creative spirit — but as 
something apart from her now, something she had had 
but had lost, which could never more be hers. How 
could she ever be glad again, with such a frightful fact 
in her soul ! Away there beyond those trees lay her 
unhappy brother in the lonely house, now haunted in- 
deed. Perhaps he lay there dead ! The horrors of the 
morning or his own hand might have slain him. She 



A DAYLIGHT VISIT. 


57 


must go to him. She would defy the very sun, and go 
in the face of the universe. Was he not her brother ? — 
Was there no help anywhere ? no mantle for this sense 
of soul-nakedness that had made her feel as if her awful 
secret might be read a mile away, lying crimson and 
livid in the bottom of her heart? She dared hardly 
think of it, lest the very act should betray the thing of 
darkness to the world of light around her. Nothing 
but the atmosphere of another innocent soul could 
shield hers, and she had no friend. What did people 
do when their brothers did awful deeds ? She had heard 
of praying to God — had indeed herself told her brother 
to pray, but it was all folly — worse, priestcraft. As if 
such things and a God could exist together ! Yet, even 
with the thought of denial in her mind, she looked up, 
and gazed earnestly into the wide, innocent, mighty 
space, as if by searching she might find some one. Per- 
haps she ought to pray. She could see no likelihood of 
a God, and yet something pushed her towards prayer. 
What if all this had come upon her and Poldie because 
she never prayed ! If there were such horrible things 
in the world, although she had never dreamed of them 
— if they could come so near her, into her very soul, 
making her feel like a murderess, might there not be a 
God also, though she knew .nothing of his. whereabouts 
orhow'to reach him and gain a hearing ?j Certainly if 
things went with^’such hellish possibilities. at the heart 
of them, and there was no hand at all to restrain or guide 
or Vestore,' the world was a‘ good deal ]worse place than 
either'the'^^methddistS'or' the positivists made it out to 


158 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


be. In the form of feelings, not of words, hardly even 
of thoughts, things like these passed through her mind 
as she stood on the top of the sunk fence and gazed 
across the flat of sunny green before her. She could 
almost have slain herself to be rid of her know- 
ledge and the awful consciousness that was its result. 
She would have found no difficulty in that line of Mac- 
beth, “ To know my deed, ’twere best not know my- 
self.” — But all this time there was her brother ! She 
must go to him. “God hide me!” she cried within 
her. “ But how can he hide me,” she thought, 
“ when I am hiding a murderer ?” “ O God !” she cried 

again, and this time in an audible murmur, “ I am his 
sister, thou knowest !” Then she turned, walked back 
to the house, and sought her aunt. 

“ I have got a little headache,” she said, quite coolly, 
“ and I want a long walk. Don’t wait luncheon for me. 
It is such a glorious day ! I shall go by the Millpool 
road, and across the park. Good-by till tea, or perhaps 
dinner-time even.” 

“ Hadn’t you better have a ride and be back to lun- 
cheon ? I shan’t want Jones to-day,” said her aunt 
mournfully, who, although she had almost given up 
birthdays, thought her niece need not quite desert her 
on the disagreeable occasion. 

“ I’m not in the humor for riding, aunt. Nothing 
will do me good but a walk. I shall put some luncheon 
in my bag.” 

She went quietly out by the front door, walked slow- 
ly, softly, statelily along the street and out of the town. 


A DAYLIGHT VISIT. 


159 


and entered the park by the lodge-gate. She saw Ra- 
chel at her work in the kitchen as she passed, and heard 
her singing in a low and weak but very sweet voice, 
which went to her heart like a sting, making the tall, 
handsome, rich lady envy the poor distorted atom who, 
through all the fogs of her winter, had yet something 
in her that sought such utterance. But, indeed, if all 
her misery had been swept away like a dream, Helen 
might yet have envied the dwarf ten times more than 
she did now, had she but known how they stood com- 
pared with each other. For the being of Helen to that 
of Rachel was as a single, untwinned primary cell to a 
finished brain ; as the peeping of a chicken to the song 
of a lark — I had almost said, to a sonata of Beethoven. 

“ Good-day, Rachel,” she said, calling as she passed, 
in a kindly, even then rather condescending voice, 
through the open door, where a pail of water, just set 
down, stood rocking the sun on its heaving surface, and 
■flashing it out again into the ocean of the light. It seem- 
ed to poor Helena squalid abode, but it was a home-like 
palace, and fairily furnished in comparison with the 
suburban villa and shop-upholstery which typified the 
house of her spirit— now haunted by a terrible secret 
walking through its rooms, and laying a bloody hand 
upon all their whitenesses. 

There was no sound all the way as she went but the 
noise of the birds and an occasional clank from the new 
building far away. At last, with beating heart and 
scared soul, she was within the high garden-wall, mak- 
ing her way through the rank growth of weeds and 


i6o 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


bushes to the dismal house. She entered trembling, 
and the air felt as if death had been before her. Hard- 
ly would her limbs carry her, but with slow step she 
reached the hidden room. He lay as she had left him. 
Was he asleep, or dead ? She crept near and laid her 
hand on his forehead. He started to his feet in an 
agony of fright. She soothed and reassured him as 
best she was able. When the paroxysm relaxed, 

“ You didn’t whistle,” he said. 

“ No ; I forgot,” answered Helen, shocked at her own 
carelessness. “ But if I had, you would not have heard 
me : you were fast asleep.” 

“ A good thing I was ! And yet no ! I wish I had 
heard you, for then b}'^ this time I should have been be- 
yond their reach.” 

Impulsively he showed her the short, dangerous-look- 
ing weapon he carried. Helen stretched out her hand 
to take it, but he hurriedly replaced it in his pocket. 

“ I will find some water for you to wash with,” 
said Helen. “ There used to be a well in the garden, I 
remember. I have brought you a shirt.” 

With some difficulty she found the well, all but lost 
in matted weeds under an ivy-tod, and in the saucer of 
a flower-pot she carried him some water, and put the 
garment with the horrible spot in her bag, to take it 
away and destroy it. Then she made him eat and drink. 
He did whatever she told him, with a dull yet doglike 
obedience. His condition was much changed ; he had 
a stupefied look, and seemed only half awake to his ter- 
rible situation. Yet he answered what questions she 


A DAYLIGHT VISIT. 


l6l 


put to him even too readily — with an indifferent matter- 
of-factness, indeed, more dreadful than any most passion- 
ate outburst. But at the root of the apparent apathy 
lay despair and remorse — weary, like gqrged and sleep- 
ing tigers far back in their dens. Only the dull torpedo 
of misery was awake, lying motionless on the bottom of 
the deepest pool of his spirit. 

The mood was favorable to the drawing of his story 
from him, but there are more particulars in the narra- 
tive I am now going to give than Helen at that time 
learned. 


V 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

Leopold’s story. 



HILE yet a mere boy, scarcely more than six- 
teen, Leopold had made acquaintance with 
the family of a certain manufacturer, who, 
having retired from business with a rapidly 


gained fortune, had some years before purchased an 
estate a few miles from Goldswyre, his uncle’s place. 

Their settling in the neighborhood was not welcome to 
the old-fashioned, long-rooted family of the Lingards ; 
but although they had not called upon them, they 
could not help meeting them occasionally. Leopold’s 
association with them commenced just after he had left 
Eton, between which time and his going up to Cam- 
bridge he spent a year in reading with his cousins’ tutor. 

It was at a ball he first saw Emmeline, the eldest of the 
family. She had but lately returned from a school at 
which from iMdloi^y^e*^ e 1 fo w^ 1 1)^acjk:^^^g ^ ^ 

ewe. It ^^c&i^s^^un^r^ 

that of pitch j^qs ohb^ljPtRPStfflct ’ttBftcel^%e?i?g^one^ of ^ 
those very 9^Mly^t?6SVii¥iWA-^schoSs' wdmre Sunt 

every thing JRs^^S? m3?ine%,^the^n * 

.UT u^' ui SuiA OH 

‘Abavs s:^! pouinsoj SuTq:^ pAO A^uosojd tq^ 

ssBjS oqt SuiAvoqo jp 


puB Suiujnq sp osbo o:^ 
puno, au pui; ‘ssAnd pio u« ^ 

.8n,n a.oujon am PUE jCsnoiEsf paJaAsj 


LEOPOLD’S STORY. 


163 


for accomplishments, and lastly for information, leaving 
all the higher faculties and endowments of the human 
being as entirely unconsidered as if they had no ex- 
istence. Taste, feeling, judgment, imagination, con- 
science, are in such places left to look after themselves, 
and the considerations presented to them and duties 
required of them as religious, are only fitted to lower 
still further such moral standard as they may possess. 

Schools of this kind send out, as their quota of the supply 
of mothers for the ages to come, young women who will 
consult a book of etiquette as to what is lady-like ; who 
always think what is the mode, never what is beautiful ; 
who read romances in which the wickedness is equalled 
only by the shallowness ; who write questions to weekly 
papers concerning points of behavior ; and place their 
whole or chief delight in making themselves attractive 
to men. Some such girls look lady-like and interesting, 
and many of them are skilled in the arts that meet their 
fullest development in a nature whose sense of existence 
is rounded by its own reflection in the mirror of a self- 
consciousness falsified by vanity. Once understood, 
they are for a sadness or a loathing, after the nature that 
understands them ; till then, they are to the beholder 
such as they desire to appear, while under the fair out- 
side lies a nature whose vulg^ritg^^Hh|:^^£js^q^)«g^ ‘iC^nnoq 
of changes do not ?nWe^Snttme^supe^i^^^q^ plj(5»^)%iBqds ou qof 
ifest itself hi 5 l?>%l\y on^fi|ap^^roac^^^^||^qj^^ldjati }0 i 


is, by the tir^H^en^al&itu^on^shaj| l^j^e,^j(J^tij©y,edw aq^ p Si 


the restraint^-B!J%^SeRce.^^R|^^ij^^^^^Yj^Tg,®h^^ u— ppoAV 
best assuranc-d^^^P^h%W J\vn cons^equence pq ‘uoiq 

P ’ ^ ... or,™ uoiU^Sumaqi * 


164 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


tion and admiration of men, such girls are seldom ca- 
pable of any real attachment, and the marvel is that so 
few of them comparatively disgrace themselves after 
marriage. 

Whether it was the swarthy side of his nature, early 
ripened under the hot Indian sun, that found itself irre- 
sistibly drawn to the widening of its humanity in the 
flaxen fairness of Emmeline, or the Saxon element in 
him seeking back to its family — it might indeed have 
been both, our nature admitting of such marvellous com- 
plexity in its unity — he fell in love with her, if not in 
the noblest yet in a very genuine though at the same 
time very passionate way ; and as she had, to use a 
Scots proverb, a crop for all corn, his attentions were 
acceptable to her. Had she been true-hearted enough 
to know anything of that love whose name was forever 
suffering profanation upon her lips, she would, being at 
least a year and a half older than he, have been too 
much of a woman to encourage his approaches— would 
have felt he was a boy and must not be allowed to fancy 
himself a man. But to be just, he did look to English eyes 
older than he was. And then he was very handsome, dis- 
tinguished-looking, of a good family, which could in no 
sense be said of her, and with high connections — at the 
same time a natural contrast to herself, and personally 
attractive to her. The first moment she saw his great 
black eyes blaze, she accepted the homage, laid it on the 
altar of her self-worship, and ever after sought to see 
them lighted up afresh in worship of her only divinity. 
To be feelingly aware of her power over him, to play 


LEOPOLD’S STORY. 


165 


upon him as on an instrument, to make his cheek pale 
or glow, his eyes flash or fill as she pleased, was a game 
almost too delightful. 

One of the most potent means for producing the hu- 
mano-atmospheric play in which her soul thus rejoiced, 
and one whose operation was to none better known 
than to Emmeline, was jealousy, and for its generation 
she had all possible facilities, for there could not be a 
woman in regard of whom jealousy was more justifiable 
on any ground except that of being worth it. So far as 
it will reach, however, it must be remembered, in mitiga- 
tion of judgment, that she had no gauge in herself equal 
to the representation of a tithe of themisery whose signs 
served to lift her to the very Paradise of falsehood : 
she knew not what she did, and possibl}'- knowledge 
might have found in her some pity and abstinence. 
But when a woman, in her own nature cold, takes de- 
light in rousing passion, she will, selfishly confident in 
her own safety, go to strange lengths in kindling and 
fanning the flame which is the death of the other. 

It is far from my intention to follow the disagreeable 
topic across the pathless swamp through which an 
elaboration of its phases would necessarily drag me. Of 
morbid anatomy, save for the setting forth of cure, I am 
not fond, and here there is nothing to be said of cure. 
What concerns me as a narrator is, that Emmeline con 
soled and irritated and reconsoled Leopold, until she 
had him her very slave, and the more her slave that by 
that time he knew something of her character. The 
knowledge took from him what little repose she had left 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


1 66 


him ; he did no more good at school, and went to Cam- 
bridge with the conviction that the woman to whom he 
had given his soul would be doing things in his absence 
the sight of which would drive him mad. Yet some- 
how he continued to live, reassured now and then by 
the loving letters she wrote to him, and relieving his 
own heart while he fostered her falsehood by the 
passionate replies he made to them. 

From a sad accident of his childhood, he had become 
acquainted with something of the influences of a certain 
baneful drug, to the use of which one of his attendants 
was addicted, and now at college, partly from curiosity, 
partly from a desire to undergo its effects, but chiefly 
in order to escape from ever gnawing and passionate 
thought, he began to make experiments in its use. 
Experiment called for repetition — in order to verifica- 
tion, said the fiend — and repetition led first to a long- 
ing after its effects, and next to a mad appetite for 
the thing itself ; so that by the time of which my narra- 
tive treats he was on the verge of absolute slavery to 
its use, and in imminent peril of having to pass the rest 


of his life in alternations of ecstasy and agony, divided 
, , „ ^ ; .Tomm uonv.six2iioo ano ao 


by dull spacesxBfe nJWf^rppfRe bcs^Mi^gr^lng rarer and 


rarer, and tl^‘ag5ts»fi^9^c^Sl^iK\9^%i%'1[requent, int^se. 


and lasting p; An.olJ[q 

OA 9^ 


uoo pqV 
Aac’'- 
99S noA 


found himse^6 qbattr^d^ j^?lWoPMis ow^n Ruined 

temple, whichutfe® ''^nig^¥ith^^ser^ . 

jpq uvq; 9 :ioui ot^oaAV i i noK ueo i J 

paddois sgoiAWS Xiu Ion i dn %oS 

XaaAS uiiq iO} sSui^ioois siq uo ;nd oi peq i ‘Xq*- 


sand. 


-XSaap JO XaTqduiaxa jsoiu puE uaui jo paq oqi J 
‘apun jnoX-i«3p Xui ‘J! OAQ.pq noX pjnoM, 
pp o} ssiqBq Uioaj jaqjouE ojui oduaos ouo j( 


T— oav u9ui s 9 jnp 9 J 0 9 iqci 9 Siui V 


j o:^ ;sJ 9 uiojj- 

•no iu9A\ 9 US ^ Aj 9 A SI ,> ^unv a 9 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


Leopold’s story concluded. 

E knew from her letters that they were going 
to give a ball, at which as many as pleased 
should be welcome in fancy dresses, and 
masked if they chose. The night before it 
dream, under the influence of his familiar no 
doubt, which made him so miserable and jealous that 
he longed to see her as a wounded man longs for water, 
and the thought arose of going down to the ball, not 
exactly in disguise, for he had no mind to act a part, 
but masked so that he should not be recognized as unin- 
vited, and should have an opportunity of watching Em- 
meline, concerning whose engagement with a young 
cavalry officer there had lately been reports, which, 
however, before his dream, had caused him less uneasi- 
ness than many such preceding. The same moment the 
thought was a resolve. 

I must mention that no one whatever knew the de- 
gree of his intimacy with Emmeline, or that he had any 
ground for considering her engaged to him. Secrecy 



he had a 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


1 68 


added much to the zest of Emmeline’s pleasures. 
Every one knew that he was a devoted admirer — but 
therein to be classed with a host. 

For concealment he contented himself with a large 
travelling cloak, a tall felt hat, and a black silk mask. 

He entered the grounds with an arrival of guests, and, 
knowing the place perfectly, contrived to see something 
of her behavior while he watched for an opportunity 
of speaking to her alone — a quest of unlikely success. 
Hour after hour he watched, and all the time never 
spoke or was spoken to. 

Those who are acquainted with the mode of operation 
of the drug to which I have referred, are aware that a 
man may be fully under its influences without betraying 
to the ordinary observer that he is in a condition differ- 
ing from that of other men. But, in the living dream 
wherein he walks, his feeling of time and of space is so 
enlarged, or perhaps, I rather think, so subdivided to 
the consciousness, that every thing about him seems 
infinite both in duration and extent ; the action of a 
second has in it a multitudinous gradation of progress, 
and a line of space is marked out into millionths, of 
every one of which the consciousness takes note. At 
the same time his senses are open to every impression 
from things around him, only they appear to him in a 
strangely exalted metamorphosis, the reflex of his own 
mental exaltation either in bliss or torture, while the 
Tatncie's of the’ man mingle with the facts thus, intro- 
duced ’and ‘^modify artd^'are in turn- modified by them,; 
whereby out oF the 'chaos arises *the ipiountuin^ of an 


LEOPOLD’S STORY CONCLUDED. 


169 


Earthly Paradise, whose roots are in the depths of hell ; 
and whether the man be with the divine air and th^* 
clear rivers and the thousand-hued flowers on the top, 
or down in the ice-lake with the tears frozen to hard 
lumps in the hollows of his eyes so that he can no more 
have even the poor consolation of weeping, is but the 
turning of a hair, so far at least as his will has to do with 
it. The least intrusion of any thing painful, of any jar 
that can not be wrought into the general harmony of 
the vision, will suddenly alter its character, and from the 
seventh heaven of speechless bliss the man may fall 
plumb down into gulfs of horrible and torturing, it may 
be loathsome imaginings. 

Now Leopold had taken a dose of the drug on his 
journey, and it was later than usual, probably because 
of the motion, ere it began to take effect. He had in- 
deed ceased to look for any result from it, when all at 
once, as he stood among the laburnums and lilacs of 
a rather late spring, something seemed to burst in his 
brain, and that moment he was Endymion waiting for 
Diana in her interlunar grove, w'hile the music of the 
spheres made the blossoms of a stately yet flowering 
forest tremble all with conscious delight. 

Emboldened by his new condition, he drew nigh the 
‘house.' They were' then passing- -from the ball to the 
’supper room, and he found the tumult so distastefuLtp 
his mddd of ‘still ecstasy that he would not have entered 
'Md he not ‘remembered that he had in his pocket a . note 
ready if needful to slip into her' hand, containing only 
the words,’" MeePm’eTor one long^minute at'the circle ” 


170 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


— a spot well known to both. He threw his cloak Span- 
ish fashion over his left shoulder, slouched his hat, and 
entering, stood in a shadowy spot she must pass in going 
to or from the supper room. There he waited, with the 
note hid in his hand, a long time, yet not a weary one, 
such visions of loveliness passed before his entranced 
gaze. At length she also passed, lovely as the Diana 
whose dress she had copied — not quite so perfectly as 
she had abjured her manners. She leaned trustingly 
on the arm of some one, but Leopold never even looked 
at him. He slid the note into her hand, which hung 
ungloved as inviting confidences. With an instinct 
quickened and sharpened tenfold by much practice, her 
fingers instantly closed upon it, but not a muscle be' 
longing to any other part of her betrayed the intrusion 
of a foreign body ; I do not believe her heart gave one 
beat the more to the next minute. She passed gracefully 
on, her swan’s-neck shining ; and Leopold hastened out 
to one of the windows of the ball-room, there to feast 
his eyes upon her loveliness. But when he caught sight 
of her whirling in the waltz with the officer of dragoons 
whose name he had heard coupled with hers, and saw 
her flash on him the light and power of eyes which 
were to him the windows of all the heaven he knew, as 
they swam together in the joy of the rhythm, of the mo- 
tion, of* the music, suddenly the whole frame of the 
dream wherein he wandered trembled, shook, fell down 
into the dreary vaults that underlie all the airy castles 
that have other foundation than the will of the eternal 
Builder. With the suddenness of the dark that follows 


LEOPOLD’S STORY CONCLUDED. 


171 


the lightning, the music changed to a dissonant clash 
of multitudinous cymbals, the resounding clang of 
brazen doors, and the hundred-toned screams of souls 
in torture. The same moment, from halls of infinite 
scope, where the very air was a soft tumult of veiled 
melodies ever and anon twisted into inextricable knots 
of harmony — under whose skyey domes he swept up- 
borne by chords of sound throbbing up against great 
wdngs mighty as thought, yet in their motions as easy 
and subtle, he found himself lying on the floor of a 
huge vault, whose black slabs were worn into many hol- 
lows by the bare feet of the damned as they went and 
came between the chambers of their torture opening off 
upon every side, whence issued all kinds of sickening 
cries, and mingled with the music to which, with whips 
of steel, hellish executioners urged the dance whose 
every motion was an agony. His soul fainted within 
him, and the vision changed. When he came to him- 
self, he lay on the little plot of grass among the lilacs 
and laburnums where he had asked Emmeline to meet 
him. Fevered with jealousy and the horrible drug, his 
mouth was parched like an old purse, and he found 
himself. chewing at the grass to ease its burning and 
drought. But presently the evil thing resumed its sway, 
and fancies usurped over facts. He was lying in an In- 
dian jungle, close by the cave of a beautiful tigress, 
which crouched within, waiting only the first sting of 
reviving hunger to devour him. He could hear her 
breathing as she slept, but he was fascinated, paralyzed, 
and could not escape-, knowing that> even if with 


172 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


mighty effort he succeeded in moving a finger, that 
motion would suffice to wake her, and she would spring 
upon him and tear him to pieces. Years upon years 
passed thus, and still he lay on the grass in the jungle, 
and still the beautiful tigress slept. But however far 
apart the knots upon the string of time may lie, they 
must pass : an angel in white stood over him ; his 
fears vanished; the waving of her wings cooled him,- 
and she was the angel whom he had loved, and loved 
from all eternity, in whom was his ever-and-only rest. 
She lifted him to his feet, she gave him her hand : they 
walked away, and the tigress was asleep forever. For 
miles and miles, as it seemed to his exaltation, they 
wandered away into the woods, to wander in them for- 
ever, the same violet blue, flashing with roseate stars, 
forever looking in through the tree-tops, and the great 
leafy branches hushing, ever hushing them, as with the 
voices of child-watching mothers, into peace, whose 
depth is bliss. 

“ Have you nothing to say now I am come }" said the 
angel. 

“ I have said all. I am at rest,” answered the mortal. 

“ I am going to be married to Captain Hodges,” said 
the angel. 

And with the word, the forest of heaven vanished, 
and the halls of Eblis did not take their place : a 
worse hell was there — the cold reality of an earth ab- 
jured, and a worthless maiden walking by his side. He 
stood and turned to her. The shock had mastered the 
drug. They were only in the little wooded hollow, a 


LEOPOLD’S STORY CONCLUDED. 


173 


hundred yards from the house. The blood throbbed in 
his head as from the piston of an engine. A horrid 
sound of dance-music was in his ears. Emmeline, his 
own, stood in her white dress, looking up in his face, 
with the words just parted from her lips, “ I am going 
to be married to Captain Hodges.” The next moment 
she threw her arms round his neck, pulled his face to 
hers, and kissed him and clung to him. 

“ Poor Leopold !” she said, and looked in his face 
with her electric battery at full power ; “ does it make 
him miserable, then ? But you know it could not have 
gone on like this between you and me forever ! It was 
very dear while it lasted, but it must come to an end.” 

Was there a glimmer of real pity and sadness in those 
wondrous eyes ? She laughed — was it a laugh of de- 
spair or of exultation ? — and hid her face on his bosom. 
And what was it that awoke in Leopold ? Had the drug 
resumed its power over him ? Was it rage at her mock- 
ery, or infinite compassion for her despair.^ Would 
he slay a demon, or ransom a spirit from hateful 
bonds ? Would he save a woman from disgrace and 
misery to come ? or punish her for the vilest falsehood ? 
Who can tell ? for Leopold himself never could. What- 
ever the feeling was, its own violence erased it from his 
memory, and left him with a knife in his hand and Em- 
meline lying motionless at his feet. It was a knife the 
Scotch highlanders call a skean-dhu, sharp-pointed as a 
needle, sharp-edged as a razor, and with one blow of it 
he had cleft her heart, and she never cried or laughed 
any more in that body whose charms she had degraded 


174 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


to the vile servitude of her vanity. The next thing he 
remembered was standing on the edge of the shaft of a 
deserted coalpit, ready to cast himself down. Whence 
came the change of resolve he could not tell, but he 
threw in his cloak and mask, and fled. The one 
thought in his miserable brain was his sister. Having 
murdered one woman, he was fleeing to another for 
refuge. Helen would save him. 

How he had found his way to his haven he had not 
an idea. Searching the newspapers, Helen learned that 
a week had elapsed between the “ mysterious murder of 
a young lady in Yorkshire” and the night on which he 
came to her window. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


SISTERHOOD. 

ELL, Poldie, after all I would rather be you 
than she !” cried Helen indignantly, when 
she had learned the whole story. 

It was far from the wisest thing to say, but 
she meant it, and clasped her brother to her bosom. 

Straightway the poor fellow began to search for all 
that man could utter in excuse, nay in justification, not 
of himself but of the woman he had murdered, appro- 
priating all the blame. But Helen had recognized in 
Emmeline the selfishness which is the essential murder- 
er, nor did it render her more lenient towards her that 
the same moment, with a start of horror, she caught a 
transient glimpse of the same in herself. But the dis- 
covery wrought in the other direction, and the tender- 
ness she now lavished upon Leopold left all his hopes 
far behind. Her brother’s sin had broken wide the fee- 
bly flowing springs of her conscience, and she saw that 
in idleness and ease and drowsiness of soul she had 
been forgetting and neglecting even the being she 



76 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


loved best in the universe. In the rushing confluence 
of love, truth, and indignation, to atone for years of 
half-love, half-indifference, as the past now appeared to 
her, she would have spoiled him terribly, heaping on 
him caresses, and assurances that he was far the 
less guilty and the more injured of the two ; but Leo- 
pold’s strength was exhausted, and he fell back in a 
faint. 

While she was occupied with his restoration, many 
things passed through her mind. Among the rest 
she saw it would be impossible for her to look after him 
sufficiently where he was, that the difficulty of feed- 
ing him even would be great, that very likely he was 
on the borders of an illness, when he would require 
constant attention, that the danger of discovery was 
great — in short, that some better measures must be 
taken for his protection and the possibility of her minis- 
trations. If she had but a friend to consult ! Ever that 
thought returned. Alas ! she had noneon whose coun- 
sel, or discretion either, she could depend ! When at 
length he opened his eyes, she told him she must leave 
him now, but when it was dark she would come again, 
and stay with him till dawn. Feebly he assented, seem- 
ing but half aware of what she said, and again closed his 
eyes. While he lay thus she gained possession of his 
knife. It left its sheath behind it, and she put it naked 
in her pocket. As she went from the room, feeling like 
a mother abandoning her child in a wolf-haunted forest, 
his eyes followed her to the door with a longing, wild, 
hungry look, and she felt the look following her still 


SISTERHOOD. 


1/7 


through the wood and across the park and into her 
chamber, while the knife in her pocket felt like a spell- 
bound demon waiting his chance to work them both a 
mischief. She locked her door and took it out, and as 
she put it carefully away, fearful lest any attempt to de- 
stroy it might but lead to its discovery, she caught sight 
of her brother’s name engraved in full upon the silver 
mounting of the handle. “ What if he had left it behind 
him !” she thought with a shudder. 

But a reassuring strength had risen in her mind with 
Leopold’s disclosure. More than once on her way 
home she caught herself reasoning that the poor boy 
had not been to blame at all ; that he could not help it ; 
that she had deserved nothing less. Her conscience 
speedily told her that in consenting to such a thought 
she herself would be a murderess. Love her brother 
she must • excuse him she might, for honest excuse is 
only justice ; but to uphold the deed would be to take 
the part of hell against heaven. Still the murder did 
not, would not seem so frightful after she had heard the 
whole tale, and she found it now required far less effort 
to face her aunt. If she was not the protectress of the 
innocent, she was of the grievously wronged, and the 
worst wrong done him was the crime he had been 
driven to do. She lay down and slept until dinner-time, 
woke refreshed, and sustained her part during the slow 
meal, heartened by the expectation of seeing her bro- 
ther again, and in circumstances of less anxiety, when the 
friendly darkness had come and all eyes but theirs were 
closed. She talked to her aunt and a lady who dined 


178 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


with them as if she had the freest heart in the world ; 
the time passed ; the converse waned ; the hour arrived ; 
adieus were said ; drowsiness came. All the world of 
Glaston was asleep ; the night on her nest was brood- 
ing upon the egg of to-morrow ; the moon was in dark- 
ness ; and the wind was blowing upon Helen’s hot fore- 
head as she slid like a thief across the park. 

Her mind was in a tumult of mingled feelings, all 
gathered about the form of her precious brother. One 
moment she felt herself ministering to the father she 
had loved so dearly, in protecting his son ; the next, the 
thought of her father had vanished, and all was love 
for the boy whose memories filled the shadow of her 
childhood ; about whom she had dreamed night after 
night as he crossed the great sea to come to her ; who 
had crept into her arms timidly, and straightway turned 
into the daintiest, merriest playmate ; who had charmed 
her even in his hot-blooded rages, when he rushed at 
her with whatever was in his hand at the moment. 
Then she had laughed and dared him, now she shud- 
dered to remember. Again — -and this was the feeling 
that generally prevailed — she was a vessel overflow- 
ing with the mere woman-passion of protection : the 
wronged, abused, maddened, oppressed, hunted human 
thing was dependent upon her, and her alone, for any 
help or safety he was ever to find. Sometimes it was 
the love of a mother for her sick child ; sometimes that 
of a tigress crouching over her wounded cub and lick- 
ing its hurts. All was colored with admiration of his 
beauty and grace, and mingled with boundless pity for 


SISTERHOOD. 


179 


their sad overclouding and defeature ! Nor was the 
sense of wrong to herself in wrong to her own flesh and 
blood wanting. The sum of all was a passionate devo- 
lion of her being to the service of her brother. 

I suspect that at root the loves of the noble wife, the 
great-souled mother, and the true sister, are one. Any- 
how, they are all but glints on the ruffled waters of hu- 
manity of'the one changeless enduring Light. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE SICK CHAMBER. 

HE had reached the little iron gate, which hung 
on one hinge only, and was lifting it from 
the ground to push it open, when sudden 
through the stillness came a frightful cry. 
Had they found him already? Was it a life-and-death 
struggle going on within ? For one moment she stood 
rooted ; the next she flew to the door. When she 
entered the hall, however, the place was silent -as a 
crypt. Could it have been her imagination ? Again, 
curdling her blood with horror, came the tearing 
cry, a sort of shout of agony. All in the dark she 
flew up the stair, calling him by name, fell twice, 
rose as if on wings, and flew again until she reached 
the room. There all was silence and darkness. 
With trembling hands she found her match-box and 
struck a light, uttering all the time every sooth- 
ing word she could think of, while her heart qua- 
vered in momentary terror of another shriek. It 
came just as the match flamed up in her fingers, and an 



THE SICK CHAMBER. 


l8l 


answering shriek from her bosom tore its way through 
her clenched teeth, and she shuddered like one in an 
ague. There sat her brother on the edge of the bed- 
stead, staring beforfe him with fixed eyes and terror- 
stricken countenance. He had not heard her enter, 
and saw neither the light nor her who held it. She 
made haste to light the candle, with mighty effort talk- 
ing to him still, in gasps and chokings, but in vain : the 
ghastly face continued unchanged, and the wide-open 
eyes remained fixed. She seated herself at his side 
and threw her arms around him. It was like embracing 
a marble statue, so moveless, so irresponsive was he. 
But presently he gave a kind of shudder, the tension of 
his frame relaxed, and the soul which had been ab- 
sorbed in its own visions came forward to its windows, 
cast from them a fleeting glance, then dropped the cur- 
tains. 

“ Is it you, Helen }'* he said, shuddering, as he closed 
his eyes and laid his head on her shoulder. His breath 
was like that of a furnace. His skin seemed on fire. 
She felt his pulse : it was galloping. He was in a fever 
— brain-fever probably — and what was she to do.? A 
thought came to her. Yes, it was the only possible 
thing. She would take him home. There, with the 
help of the household, she might have a chance of con- 
cealing him — a poor one, certainly; but here, how was 
she even to keep him to the house in his raving fits ? 

“ Poldie, dear !” she said, “you must come with me. 
I am going to take you to my own room, where I can 


i 82 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


nurse you properly and need not leave you. Do you 
think you could walk as far ?” ... 

“Walk! Yes; quite well ; why not?”' 

“ I am afraid you are going to* be ill, Poldie ; but, 
however ill you may feel, you must promise me to try 
to make as little noise as you can, and never cry out if 
you can help it. When I do like this,” she went on, 
laying her finger on his lips, “ you must be silent alto- 
gether.” 

“ I will do whatever you tell me, Helen, if you will 
only promise not to leave me, and, when they come for 
me, to give me poison.!' 

She promised, and made haste to obliterate every sign 
that the room had been occupied. She then took his 
arm and led him out. He was very quiet — too quiet and 
submissive, she thought — seemed sleepy, revived a lit- 
tle when they reached the open air, presently grew ter- 
rified, and kept starting and looking about him as they 
crossed the park, but never spoke a word. By the door 
in the sunk fence they reached the garden, and were 
soon in Helen’s chamber, where she left him to get into 
bed while she went to acquaint her aunt of his presence 
in the house. Hard and unreasonable, like most human 
beings, where her prejudices were concerned, she had, 
like all other women, sympathy with those kinds of suf- 
fering which by experience she understood. Mental dis- 
tress was beyond her, but for the solace of another’s 
pain she would even have endured a portion herself. 
When therefore she heard Helen’s story, how her bro- 
ther had come to her window, that he was ill with brain- 


THE SICK CHAMBER. 


183 


fever as she thought, and talked wildly, she quite ap- 
proved of her having put him to bed in her own room, 
and would have got up to help in nursing him. But 
Helen persuaded her to have her night’s rest, and 
begged her to join with her in warning the servants not 
to mention his presence in the house, on the ground that 
it might get abroad that he was out of his mind. They 
were all old and tolerably faithful, and Leopold had 
been from childhood such a favorite that she hoped 
thus to secure their silence. 

“ But, child, he must have the doctor,” said her aunt. 

“ Yes ; but I wall manage him. What a good thing old 
Mr. Bird is gone ! He was such a gossip ! We must 
call in the new doctor, Mr. Faber. I shall see that he 
understands. He has his practice to make, and will 
mind what I say.” 

“ Why, child, you are as cunning as an old witch !” 
said her aunt. “ — It is very awkward,” she went on. 
“ What miserable creatures men are — from first to last ! 
Out of one scrape into another from babies to old 
men! Would you believe it, my dear? — your uncle, 
one of the best of men and most exemplary of clergy- 
men— why, I had to put on his stockings for him every 
day he got up ! Not that my services stopped there 
either, I can tell you ! Latterly I wrote more than half 
his sermons for him. He never would preach the same 
sermon twice, you see. He made that a point of 
honor ; and the consequence was that at last he had to 
come to me. His sermons were nothing the losers, I 
trust, or our congregation either; I used the same 


1 84 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


commentaries he did, and you would hardly believe how 
much I enjoyed the work. — Poor dear boy ! we must do 
what we can for him.” 

“ I will call you if I find it necessary, aunt. I must go 
to him now, for he can not bear me out of his sight. 
Don’t, please, send for the doctor till I see you again.” 

When she got back to her room, to her great relief 
she found Leopold asleep. The comfort of the bed 
after his terrible exhaustion and the hardships he had 
undergone, had combined with the drug under whose 
influence he had more or less been ever since first he 
appeared at Helen’s window, and he slept soundly. 

But when he woke he was in a high fever, and Mr. 
Faber was summoned. He found the state of his pa- 
tient such that no amount of wild utterance could have 
surprised him. His brain was burning and his mind all 
abroad ; he tossed from side to side and talked vehe- 
mently, but even to Helen unintelligibly. 

Mr. Faber had not attended medical classes and 
walked the hospitals without undergoing the influences 
of the unbelief prevailing in those regions, where, on 
the strength of a little knowledge of the human frame, 
cart-loads of puerile ignorance and anile vulgarity, not 
to mention obscenity, are uttered in the name of truth 
by men who know nothing whatever of the things that 
belong to the deeper nature believed in by the devout 
and simple, and professed also by many who are per- 
haps yet farther from a knowledge of its affairs than 
those who thus treat them with contempt. When, 
therefore, he came to practise in Glaston, he brought his 


THE SICK CHAMBER. 


185 


quota of yeast into the old bottle of that ancient and 
slumberous town. . But as he had to gain for himself a 
practice, he was prudent enough to make no display of 
the cherished emptiness of his swept and garnished 
rooms. I do not mean to blame him. He did not fancy 
himself the holder of any Mephistophelean commission 
for the general annihilation of belief like George Bas- 
combe, only one from nature’s bureau of ways and 
means for the cure of the ailing body — which indeed, to 
him, comprised all there was of humanity. He had a 

o 

cold, hard, business-like manner, v/hich, however ad- 
mirable on some grounds, destroyed any hope Helen 
had cherished of finding in him one to whom she might 
disclose her situation. 

■He proved himself both wise and skilful, yet it was 
weeks before Leopold began to mend. By the time the 
fever left him he was in such a prostrate condition 
that it was very doubtful whether yet he could live, and 
Helen had had to draw largely even upon her fine stock 
of health. 

Her ministration continued most exhausting. Yet 
now she thought of her life as she had never thought of 
it before — namely, as a thing of worth. It had grown 
precious to her since it had become the stay of Leo- 
pold's. Notwithstanding the terrible state of suspense 
and horror in which she now lived, seeming to herself 
at times an actual sharer in her brother’s guilt, she 
would yet occasionally find herself exulting in the 
thought of being the guardian angel he called her. 
Now that by his bedside hour plodded after hour in 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


1 86 


something of sameness and much of weariness, she yet 
looked back on her past as on the history of a slug. 

During all the time she scarcely saw her cousin 
George, and indeed, she could hardly tell why, shrank 
from him. In the cold, bright, shadowless, north-windy 
day of his presence there was little consolation to be 
gathered, and for strength — to face him made a-fresh de- 
mand upon the little she had. Her physical being had 
certainly lost. But the countenance which, after a long 

interval of absence, the curate at length one morning 

• 

descried in the midst of the congregation, had, along 
with its pallor and look of hidden and suppressed trou- 
ble, gathered the expression of a higher order of exist- 
ence. Not that she had drawn a single consoling 
draught from any one of the wells of religion, or now 
sought the church for the sake of any reminder of 
something found precious : the great quiet place drew 
her merely with the offer of its two hours’ restful still- 
ness. The thing which had elevated her was simply the 
fact that, without any thought, not to say knowledge of 
him, she had yet been doing the will of the Heart of the 
world. True she had been but following her instinct, 
and ministering, not to humanity from an enlarged af- 
fection, but only to the one being she best loved in all 
the world— a small merit surely ! — yet was it the begin- 
ning of the way of God, the lovely way, and therefore 
the face of the maiden had begun to shine with a light 
which no splendor of physical health, no consciousness 
of beauty, however just, could have kindled there. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


THE curate’s progress. 

HE visits of Wingfold to the little people at 
the gate not only became frequent, but more 
and more interesting to him, and as his of- 
fice occasioned few demands on his atten- 
tion, Polwarth had plenty of time to give to one who 
sought instruction in those things which were his very 
passion. He had never yet had any pupil but his 
niece, and to find another, and one whose soul was so 
eager after that of which he had such long-gathered 
store to dispense, was a keen, pure, and solemn delight. 
It was that for which he had so often prayed — an outlet 
for the living waters of his spirit into dry and thirsty 
lands. He had not much faculty for writing, although 
now and then he would relieve his heart in verse ; and 
if he had a somewhat remarkable gift of discourse, to 
attempt public utterance would have been but a vain 
exposure of his person to vulgar mockery. In Wing- 
fold he had found a man docile and obedient, both 
thirsting after and recognizant of the truth, and if he 



i88 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


might but aid him in unsealing the well of truth in his 
own soul, the healing waters might from him flow far 
and near. Not as the little Zacchaeus who pieced his 
own shortness with the length of the sycamore tree, so 
to rise above his taller brethren and see Jesus, little 
Polwarth would lift tall Wingfold on his shoulders, first 
to see, and then cry aloud to his brethren who was at 
hand. 

For two or three Sundays the curate, largely assisted 
by his friend, fed his flock with his gleanings from 
other men’s harvests, and already, though it had not 
yet come to his knowledge, one consequence was that 
complaints, running together, made a pool of discon- 
tent, and a semi-public meeting had been held, wherein 
was discussed, and not finally negatived, the propriety 
of communicating with the rector on the subject. 
Some, however, held that, as the incumbent paid so little 
attention to his flock, it would be better to appeal to 
the bishop, and acquaint him with the destitution of 
that portion of his oversight. But things presently 
took a new turn, at first surprising, soon alarming to 
some, and at length to not a few appalling. 

Obedient to Polwarth’s instructions. Wingfold had 
taken to his New Testament. At first, as he read and 
sought to understand, ever and anon some small diffi- 
culty, notably, foremost of all, the discrepancy in the 
genealogies — I mention it merely to show the sort of 
difficulty I mean — would insect-like shoot out of the 
darkness and sting him in the face. Some of these he 
pursued, encountered, crushed — and found he had 


THE curate’s progress. 


89 


gained next to nothing by the victory ; and Polwarth 
soon persuaded him to let such alone for the present, 
seeing they involved nothing concerning the man at a 
knowledge of whom it was his business to arrive. But 
when it came to the perplexity caused by some of the 
sayings of Jesus himself,, it was another matter. He 
must understand these, he thought, or fail to understand 
the man. Here Polwarth told him that, if, after all, he 
seemed to fail, he must conclude that possibly the 
meaning of the words was beyond him, and that the 
understanding of them depended on a more advanced 
knowledge of Jesus himself ; for, while words reveal 
the speaker, they must yet lie in the light of some- 
thing already known of the speaker to be themselves 
intelligible. Between the mind and the understanding 
of certain hard utterances, therefore, there must of ne- 
cessity lie a gradation of easier steps. And here Pol- 
warth was tempted to give him a far more impor- 
tant, because more immediately practical hint, but re- 
frained, from the dread of weakening by presentatiotty 
the force of a truth which, in discovery, would have its 
full effect. For he was confident that the curate, in the 
temper which was now his, must ere long come imme- 
diately upon the truth towards which he was tempted 
to point him. 

On one occasion when Wingfold had asked him 
whether he saw the meaning of a certain saying of our 
Lord, Polwarth answered thus : 

“ I think I do ; but whether I could at present make 
you see it I can not tell. I suspect it is one of those 


190 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


concerning which I have already said that you have yet 
to understand Jesus better before you can understand 
them. Let me, just to make the nature of what I state 
clear to you, ask you one question : tell me, if you can, 
what, primarily, did Jesus, from his own account of 
himself, come into the world to do ?” 

“ To save it,” answered Wingfold. 

“ I think you are wrong,” returned Polwarth. “ Mind, 
I said primarily. You will yourself come to the same 
conclusion by and by. Either our Lord was a phantom 
— a heresy of potent working in the minds of many who 
would be fierce in its repudiation — or he was a very 
man, uttering the heart of his life that it might become 
the life of his brethren ; and if so, an honest man can 
never ultimately fail of getting at what he means. I have 
seen him described somewhere as a man dominated by 
the passion of humanity — or something like that. The 
description does not, to my mind, even shadow the truth. 
Another passion, if such I may dare to call it, was the 
light of his life, dominating even that which would yet 
have been enough to make him lay down his life.” 

Wingfold went away pondering. 

Though Polwarth read little concerning religion ex- 
cept the New Testament, he could yet have directed 
Wingfold to several books which might have lent him 
good aid in his quest after the real likeness of the man 
he sought ; but he greatly desired that on the soul of 
his friend the dawn should break over the mountains of 
Judaea — the first light, I mean, flow from the words 
themselves of the Son of Man. Sometimes he grew so 


THE curate’s progress. 


I9I 


excited about his pupil and his progress, and looked so 
anxiously for the news of light in his darkness, that he 
could not rest at home, but would be out all day in the 
park — praying, his niece believed, for the young parson. 
And little did Wingfold suspect that, now and again 
when his lamp was burning far into the night because 
he struggled with some hard saying, the little man was 
going round and round the house like one muttering 
charms, only they were prayers for his friend. Ill satis- 
fied with his own feeble affection, he would supplement 
it with its origin, would lay hold upon the riches of the 
Godhead, crying for his friend to “ the first stock-father 
of gentleness — folly all, and fair subject of laughter to 
such as George Bascombe, if there be no God ; but as 
Polwarth, with his whole, healthy, holy soul, believed 
there is a God, it was for him but simple common-sense. 

Still no daybreak ; and now the miracles had grown 
troublesome ! Could Mr. Polwarth honestly say that 
he found no difficulty in believing things so altogether 
out of the common order of events, and so buried in the 
darkness and dust of antiquity that investigation was 
impossible ? 

Mr. Polwarth could not say that he had found no 
such difficulty. 

“ Then why should the weight of the story,” said 
Wingfold, “ the weight of its proof, I mean, to minds 
like ours, coming so long after, and by their education 
incapacitated for believing in such things, in a time 
when the law of every thing is searched into — ” 


192 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ And as yet very likely as far from understood as 
ever," interposed but not interrupted Polwarth. 

“ — why should the weight of its proof, I ask, be laid 
upon such improbable things as miracles? That they 
are necessarily improbable, I presume you will admit." 

“ Having premised that I believed every one record- 
ed," said Polwarth, “ I heartily admit their improbabili- 
ty. But the weight of proof is not, and never was, laid 
upon them. Our Lord did not make much of them, and 
did them far more for the individual concerned than for 
the sake of the beholders. I will not, however, talk to 
you about them now. I will merely say that it is not 
through the miracles you will find the Lord, though, 
having found him, you will find him there also. The 
question for you is not, Are the miracles true ? but. Was 
Jesus true ? Again I say, you must find him — the man 
himself. When you have found him, I may perhaps re- 
tort upon you the question, ‘ Can you believe such im- 
probable things as the miracles, Mr. Wingfold ?’ ” 

The little man showed pretty plainly by the set of his 
lips that he meant to say no more, and again Wingfold 
had, with considerable dissatisfaction and no answer, to 
go back to his New Testament, 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


THE CURATE MAKES A DISCOVERY. 


T length, one day, as he was working with a 
harmony, comparing certain passages be- 
tween themselves, and as variedly given in 
the gospels, he fell into a half-thinking, half- 
dreaming mood, in which his eyes, for some time uncon- 
sciously, rested on the verse, ‘ Ye will not come unto me 
that ye might have life.’ It mingled itself with his 
brooding, and by and by, though yet he was brooding 
rather than meditating, the form of Jesus had gathered, 
in the stillness of his mental quiescence, so much of re- 
ality that at length he found himself thinking of him as 
of a true-hearted man, mightily in earnest to help his 
fellows, who could not get them to mind what he told 
them. 

Ah ! ” said the curate to himself, “ if I had but seen 
him, would not I have minded him! would not I have 
haunted his steps, with question upon question, until I 
got at the truth ! ” 

Again the more definite thought vanished in the 
13 ^93 




194 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


seething chaos of reverie, which dured unbroken for 
a time, until again suddenly rose from memory to con- 
sciousness and attention the words, “ Why call ye me. 
Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? ” 

Good God ! ” he exclaimed, “ here am I bothering 
over words, and questioning about this and that, as if 
I were testing his fitness for a post 1 had to offer him, 
and he ail the time claiming my obedience! I can not 
even, on the spur of the moment at least, tell one thing 
he wants me to do ; and as to doing any thing because 
he told me — not once did I ever ! But then how am I 
to obey him until I am sure of his right to command ? I 
just want to know whether I am to call him Lord or 
not. No, that won’t do either, for he says. Why even 
of yourselves judge ye not what is right? And do I not 
know — have I ever even doubted that what he said we 
ought to do, was the right thing to do? Yet here have 
I, all these years, been calling myself a Christian, min- 
istering, forsooth, in the temple of Christ, as if he were 
a heathen divinity, who cared for songs and prayers 
and sacrifices, and can not honestly say I ever once in 
my life did a thing because he said so, although the re- 
cord is full of his earnest, even pleading words 1 I have 
n£>/heen an honest man, and how should a dishonest 
man be a judge over that man who said he was the 
Christ of God? Would it be any wonder if the things 
he uttered should be too high and noble to be by such 
a man recognized as truth? ” 

With this, yet another saying dawned upon him : If 


THE CURATE MAKES A DISCOVERY. 


195 


any man will do his willy he shall know of the doctriney 
whether it be of Gody or whether I speak of my self I' 

He went into his closet and shut the door ; came 
out again, and went straight to visit a certain grievous 
old woman. 

The next open result was, that, on the following Sun- 
day, a man went up into the pulpit who, for the first 
time in his life, believed he had something to say to his 
fellow-sinners. It was not now the sacred spoil of the 
best of gleaning or catering that he bore thither with 
him, but the message given him by a light in his own 
inward parts, discovering therein the darkness and the 
wrong. 

He opened no sermon case, nor read words from any 
book, save, with trembling voice, these : 

“ Why call ye mey Lordy Lordy and do not the things 
which I say ? ” 

I pause for a moment in my narrative to request the 
sympathy of such readers as may be capable of affording 
it, for a man whose honesty makes him appear egotis- 
tic. When a man, finding himself in a false position, is 
yet anxious to do the duties of that position until such 
time as, if he should not in the mean time have verified 
it and become able to fill it with honesty, he may hon- 
orably leave it, I think he may well be pardoned if, of 
inward necessity, he should refer to himself in a place 
where such reference may be either the greatest impie- 
ty or the outcome of the truest devotion. In him it 
was neither: it was honesty — and absorption in the 
startled gaze of a love that believed it had caught a 


196 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


glimmer of the passing garment of the Truth. Thus 
strengthened — might I not say inspired? for what is the 
love of truth and the joy therein, if not a breathing into 
the soul of the breath of life from the God of truth? — 
he looked round upon his congregation as he had never 
dared until now ; saw face after face, and knew it ; saw 
among the rest that of Helen Lingard, so sadly yet not 
pitifully altered, with a doubt if it could be she ; trem- 
bled a little with a new excitement, which one less mod- 
est or less wise might have taken — how foolishly ! — in- 
stead of the truth perceived, for the inspiration of the 
spirit ; and, sternly suppressing the emotion, said, 

My hearers, I come before you this morning to utter 
the first word of truth it has ever been given to 7ne to 
utter.” 

His hearers stared both mentally and corporeally. 

‘‘ Is he going to deny the Bible ? ” said some. It will 
be the last,” said others, ‘‘if the rector hear in time how 
you have been disgracing yourself and profaning his 
pulpit.” 

“And,” the curate went on, “it would be as a fire in 
my bones did I atterhpt to keep it back. 

“ In my room, three days ago, I was reading the 
strange story of the man who appeared in Palestine say- 
ing that he was the Son of God, and came upon those 
words of his which I have now read in your hearing. 
At their sound the accuser. Conscience, awoke in my 
bosom, and asked, ‘ Doest thou the things he saith to 
thee ? ’ And I thought with myself, ‘ Have I this day 
done any thing he says to me ? When did I do any thing 


THE CURATE MAKES A DISCOVERY. 


197 


I had heard of him ? Did I ever ’ — to this it came at 
last — ^ Did I ever, in all my life, do one thing because he 
said to me. Do this ? ’ And the answer was Noy never. 
Yet there I was, not only calling myself a Christian, but 
on the strength of my Christianity, it was to be pre- 
sumed, living among you, and received by you, as 
your helper on the way to the heavenly kingdom — a 
living falsehood, walking and talking among you ! ” 

What a wretch ! ” said one man to himself, who 
made a large part of his living by the sale of under-gar- 
ments whose every stitch was an untacking of the body 
from the soul of a seamstress. Bah ! ” said some. 

A hypocrite, by his own confession ! ” said others. 
‘‘ Exceedingly improper !” said Mrs. Ramshorn. Un- 
heard-of and most unclerical behavior ! And actually 
to confess such paganism ! ” For Helen, she waked up 
a little, began to listen, and wondered what he had 
been saying that a wind seemed to have blown rustling 
among the heads of the congregation. 

Having made this confession,” Wingfold proceeded, 
you will understand that whatever I now say, I say to 
and of myself as much as to and of any other to whom it 
may apply.” 

He then proceeded to show that faith and obedience 
are one and the same spirit, passing, as it were, from 
room to room in the same heart : what in the heart we 
call faith, in the will we call obedience. He showed 
that the Lord refused absolutely the faith that found its 
vent at the lips in the worshipping words, and not at the 
limbs in obedient action — which some present pro- 


198 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


nounced bad theology, while others said to themselves 
surely that at least was gommon sense. For Helen, 
what she heard might be interesting to clergymen, or 
people like her aunt who had to do with such matters, 
but to her it was less than nothing and vanity, whose 
brother lay at home “ sick in heart and sick in head.” 

But hard thoughts of him could not stay the fountain 
of Wingfold’s utterance, which filled as it flowed. Ea- 
ger after a right presentation of what truth he saw, he 
dwelt on the mockery it would be of any man to call 
him the wisest, the best, the kindest, yea, and the dear- 
est of men, yet never heed either the smallest request 
or the most urgent entreaty he made. 

Socinian ! ” said Mrs. Ramshorn. 

There’s stuff in the fellow!” said the rector’s 
churchwarden, who had been brought up a Wesleyan. 

“ He’d make a fellow fancy he did believe all his 
grandmother told him 1 ” thought Bascombe. 

As he went on, the awakened curate grew almost elo- 
quent. His face shone with earnestness. Even Helen 
found her gaze fixed upon him, though she had not a 
notion what he was talking about. He closed at length 
with these words : 

‘‘ After the confession I have now made to you, a con- 
fession which I have also entreated every one of you to 
whom it belongs, to make to himself and his God, it 
follows that I dare not call myself a Christian. How 
should such a one as I know any thing about that 
which, if it be true at all, is the loftiest, the one all-ab- 
sorbing truth in the universe? How should such a fel- 


THE CURATE MAKES A DISCOVERY. 


199 


low as I ” — he went on, growing scornful at himself in 
the presence of the truth — “ judge of its sacred probabi- 
lities ? or, having led such a life of simony, be heard 
when he declares that such a pretended message from 
God to men seems too good to be true ? The things 
therein contained I declared good, yet went not and did 
them. Therefore am I altogether out of court, and 
must not be heard in the matter. 

No, my hearers, I call not myself a Christian, but I 
call every one here who obeys the word of Jesus, who 
restrains anger, who declines judgment, who practises 
generosity, who loves his enemies, who prays for his 
slanderers, to witness my vow, that I too will hence- 
forth try to obey him, in the hope that he whom he 
called God and his Father will reveal to me him whom 
you call your Lord Jesus Christ, that into my darkness 
I may receive the light of the world ! ’’ 

“ A professed infidel ! said Mrs. Ramshorn. ** A cle- 
ver one too ! That was a fine trap he laid for us to 
prove us all atheists as well as himself ! As if any mere 
mortal cou/d obey the instructions of the Saviour ! He 
was divine ; we are but human.” 

She might have added, “ And but poor creatures as 
such,” but did not go so far, believing herself more than 
an average specimen. 

But there was one shining face which, like a rising 
sun of love and light and truth, ‘'pillowed his chin,” 
not “ on an orient wave,” but on the book-board of a 
free seat. The eyes of it were full of tears, and the 
heart behind it was giving that God and Father thanks. 


200 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


for this was more, far more than he had even hoped for 
save in the indefinite future. The light was no longer 
present as warmth or vivification alone, but had be- 
gun to shine as light in the heart of his friend, to whom 
now, praised be God ! the way lay open into all truth. 
And when the words came, in a voice that once more 
trembled with emotion, Now to God the Father,” he 
bent down his face, and the poor, stunted, distorted 
frame and great gray head were grievously shaken with 
the sobs of a mighty gladness. Truth in the inward parts 
looked out upon him from the face of one who stood 
before* the people their self-denied teacher! How 
would they receive it? It mattered not. Those whom 
the Father had drawn would hear. 

Polwarth neither sought the curate in the vestry, 
waited for him at the church-door, nor followed him to 
his lodging. He was not of those who compliment a 
man on his fine sermon. How grandly careless are 
some men of the risk of ruin their praises are to their 
friends! Let God praise him!” said Polwarth; “I 
will only dare to love him.” He would not toy with his 
friend’s waking Psyche. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

HOPES. 


T was the first Sunday Helen had gone to 
church since her brother came to her. 
On the previous Sunday he had passed some 
crisis and begun to improve, and by the 
end of the week was so quiet that, longing for a change 
of atmosphere, and believing he might be left with the 
housekeeper, she had gone to church. On her return 
she heard he was no worse, although he had “ been a 
frettin’ after her.” She hurried to him as if he had been 
her baby. 

‘‘What do you go to church for?” he asked, half- 
petulantly, like a spoilt child, with languid eyes whence 
the hard fire had vanished. “What’s the use of it? ” 

He looked at her, waiting for an answer. 

“ Not much,” replied Helen. “ I like the quiet and 
the music, that’s all.” 

He seemed disappointed, and lay still for a few mo- 
ments. 

“ In old times,” he said at last, “the churches used to 
201 



202 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


be a refuge : I suppose that is why one can’t help feel- 
ing as if some safety were to be got from them yet. — 
Was your cousin George there this morning? ” 

Yes, he went with us,” answered Helen. 

I should like to see him. I want somebody to talk 

to.” 

Helen was silent. She was more occupied, however, 
in answering to herself the question why she shrunk so 
decidedly from bringing Bascombe into the sick-room 
than in thinking what she should say to Leopold. The 
truth was the truth, and why should she object to Leo- 
pold’s knowing, or at least being told as well as herself, 
that he need fear no punishment in the next world, 
whatever he might have to encounter in this ; that there 
was no frightful God who hated wrong-doing to be ter- 
rified at ; that even the badness of own action need not 
distress him, for he and it would pass away as the blood 
he had shed had already vanished from the earth ? 
Ought it not to encourage the poor fellow ? But to 
what? To live on and endure his misery, or to put an 
end to it and himself at once ? Or perhaps to plunge 
into vice that he might escape the consciousness of 
guilt and the dread of the law? 

I will not say that exactly such a train of thought as 
this passed through her mind, but of whatever sort it 
was, it brought her no nearer to a desire for the light of 
George Bascombe’s presence by the bedside of her 
guilty brother. At the same time her partiality for her 
cousin made her justify his exclusion thus : George is 
so good himself, he is only fit for the company of good 


HOPES. 


203 


people. He would not in the least understand my poor 
Poldie, and would be too hard upon him.” 

Since her brother’s appearance, in fact, she had seen 
very little of her cousin, and this not merely because 
her presence was so much required in the sick-chamber, 
but because she was herself unwilling to meet him. She 
had felt, almost without knowing it, that his character 
was unsympathetic, and that his loud, cold good-nature 
could never recognize or justify such love as she bore 
to her brother. Nor was this all; for, remembering 
how he had upon one occasion expressed himself with 
regard to criminals, she feared even to look in his 
face, lest his keen, questioning, unsparing eye should 
read in her soul that she was the sister of a murderer. 

Before this time, however, a hint of light had appeared 
in the clouds that enwrapped her and Leopold; she 
had begun to doubt whether he had really committed 
the crime of which he accused himself. There had 
been no inquiry after him, except from his uncle, con- 
cerning his absence from Cambridge, for which his sud- 
den attack of brain-fever served as more than sufficient 
excuse. That there had been such a murder the news- 
papers left her no room to question ; but might not the 
relation in which he stood to the victim, the horror of 
her death, the insidious approaches of the fever, and 
the influences of that hateful drug, have combined to 
call up an hallucination of blood-guiltiness? And what 
at length all but satisfied her of the truth of her con- 
jecture was that when he began to recover, Leopold 
seemed himself in doubt at times whether his sense of 


204 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


guilt had not its origin in some one or other of the 
many dreams which had haunted him throughout his 
illness, knowing only too well that it was long since 
dreams had become to him more real than the greater 
part of what was going on around him. To this blur- 
ring and confusing of consciousness it probably contri- 
buted, that in the first stages of the fever he was under 
the influence of the same drug which had been working 
upon his brain up to the very moment when he commit- 
ted the crime. 

During the week the hope had almost settled into 
conviction; and one consequence was that, although 
she was not a whit more inclined to introduce George 
Bascombe into the sick-chamber, she found herself not 
only equal but no longer averse to meeting him ; and on 
the following Saturday, when he presented himself as 
usual, come to spend the Sunday, she listened to her 
aunt, and consented to go out with him for a ride — in the 
evening, however, when Mrs. Ramshorn herself, who 
had shown Leopold great and genuine kindness, would 
be able to sit with him. They therefore had dinner early, 
and Helen went again to her brother’s room, unwill- 
ing to leave him a moment until she gave up her charge 
to her aunt. 

They had tea together, and Leopold was very quiet. 
It is wonderful with what success the mind will accom- 
modate itself, in its effort after peace, to the presence of 
the most torturing thought. But Helen took this qui- 
etness for a sign of innocence, not knowing that the 
state of the feelings is neither test nor gauge of guilt. 


HOPES. 


205 


The nearer perfection a character is, the louder is the 
cry of conscience at the appearance of fault ; and, on 
the other hand, the worst criminals have had the easiest 
minds. 

Helen also was quief, and fell into a dreamy mood, 
watching her brother, who every now and then turned 
on her a look of love and gratitude which moved her 
heart to its very depths. Not until she heard the horses 
coming round from the stable did she rise to go and 
change her dress. 

** I shall not be long away from you, Poldie,” she 
said. 

** Do not forget me, Helen,” he returned. If you for- 
get me, an enemy will think of me.” 

His love comforted her, and yet further strengthened 
her faith in his innocence ; and it was with a kind of 
half -repose, timid, wavering, and glad, upon her coun- 
tenance — how different from the old, dull, wooden 
quiescence ! — that she joined her cousin in the hall. A 
moment, and he had lifted her to the saddle, and was 
mounted by her side. 


CHAPTER XXXIIL 


THE RIDE. 

SOFT west wind, issuing as from the heart 
of a golden vase filled with roses, met them 
the instant they turned out of the street, • 
walking their horses towards the park-gate. 

Something — was it in the evening, or was it in his own 
soul? — had prevailed to the momentary silencing of 
George Bascombe : it may have been but the influence 
of the cigar which Helen had begged him to finish. 
Helen, too, was silent : she felt as if the low red sun, 
straight into which they seemed to be liding, blotted out 
her being in the level torrent of his usurping radiance. 
Neither of them spoke a word until they had passed 
through the gate into the park. 

It was a perfect English summer evening — warm, but 
not sultry. As they walked their horses up the car- 
riage-way the sun went down, and, as if he had fallen 
like a live coal into some celestial magazine of color and 
glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson 
and green in a golden triumph — pure fire, the smoke 
and fuel gone, and the radiance alone left. And now 
206 



THE RIDE. 


207 


Helen received the second lesson of her initiation into 
the life of nature : she became aware that the whole 
evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew 
deeper and the night drew closer, the world seemed to 
have grown dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had 
been driven herself to think — if not deeply, yet intense- 
ly — and so knew what it was like, and felt at home with 
the twilight. 

They turned from the drive on to the turf. Their 
horses tossed up their heads, and set off, unchecked, at 
a good pelting gallop across the open park. On Hel- 
en’s cheek the wind blew cooling, strong, and kind. As 
if flowing from some fountain above, in an unseen un- 
banked river, down through the stiller ocean of the air, 
it seemed to bring to her a vague promise, almost a pre- 
cognition, of peace — which, however, only set her long- 
ing after something — she knew not what — something of 
which she only knew that it would fill the longing the 
wind had brought her. The longing grew and extended 
— went stretching on and on into an infinite of rest. 
And as they still galloped, and the light-maddened co- 
lors sank into smoky-peach and yellow-green and blue- 
gray, the something swelled and swelled in ner soul, and 
pulled and pulled at her heart, until the tears were run- 
ning down her face. For fear Bascombe should see 
them, she gave her horse the rein, and fled from him 
into the friendly dusk that seemed to grade time into 
eternity. 

Suddenly she found herself close to a clump of trees, 
which overhung the deserted house. She had made a 


2o8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


great circuit without knowing it. A pang shot to her 
heart, and her tears ceased to flow. The night, silent 
with thought, held that also in its bosom ! She drew 
rein, turned, and waited for Bascombe. 

What a chase you’ve given me, Helen ! ” he cried, 
while yet pounding away some score of yards off. 

A wild-goose one you mean, cousin? ” 

It would have been if I had thought to catch you on 
this ancient cocktail.” 

Don’t abuse the old horse, George : he has seen 
better days. I would gladly have mounted you more to 
your mind, but you know I could not — except, indeed, I 
had given you my Fanny, and taken the old horse my- 
self. 1 have ridden him.” 

‘‘The lady ought always to be the better mounted,” 
returned George coolly. “ For my part, I much prefer 
it, because then I need not be anxious about wh ther I 
am boring her or not : if I am, she can run away.” 

“ You can not suppose I thought you a bore to-night. 
A more sweetly silent gentleman none could wish for 
squire.” 

“Then it was my silence bored you. Shall I tell 
you what I was thinking about? ” 

“ If you like. I was thinking how pleasant it would 
be to ride on and on and on into eternity,” said Helen. 

“That feeling of continuity,” returned George, “is a 
proof of the painlessness of departure. No one can 
ever know when he ceases to be, because then he is not ; 
and that is how some men come to fancy they feel as if 
they were going to live forever. But the worst of it is 


THE RIDE. 


209 


that they no sooner fancy it than it seems to them a prob- 
able as well as a delightful thing to go on and on and 
never cease. This comes of the man’s having no con- 
sciousness of ceasing, and when one is comfortable it 
always seems good to go on. A child is never willing 
to turn from the dish of which he is eating to another. 
It is more he wants, not another.” 

That is if he likes it,” said Helen. 

Every body likes it,” said George, ** — more or 
less.” 

I am not so sure of every body,” replied Helen. Do 
you imagine that twisted little dwarf-woman that opened 
the gate for us is content with her lot? ” 

No, that is impossible — while she sees and remains 
what she is. But I said nothing of contentment. I was 
but thinking of the fools who, whether content or not, 
yet want to live forever, and so, very conveniently, take 
their longing for immortality, which they call an idea 
innate in the human heart, for a proof that immortality 
is their rightful inheritance.” 

How then do you account for the existence and 
universality of the idea?” asked Helen, who had hap- 
pened lately to come upon some arguments on the other 
side. 

But while she spoke thus indifferently she felt in her 
heart like one who wakes from a delicious swim in the 
fairest of rivers, to find that the clothes have slipped 
from the bed to the floor : that was all his river and all 
his swim ! 

<< I account for its existence as I have just said ; and 

14 


,210 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


for its universality by denying it. It is not universal, 
for /haven’t it.” 

“ At least you will not deny that men, even when 
miserable, shrink from dying? ” 

Any thing, every thing is unpleasant out of its due 
time. I will allow, for the sake of argument, that the 
thought of dying is always unpleasant. But wherefore 
so? Because, in the very act of thinking it, the idea 
must always be taken from the time that suits with it — 
namely, its own time, when it will at length, and ought 
at length, to come — and placed in the midst of the lively 
present, with which assuredly it does not suit. To life, 
death must be always hateful. In the rush and turmoil 
of effort, how distasteful even the cave of the hermit, 
let ever such a splendid view spread abroad before its 
mouth ! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, 
for then its time will have come also — the man will be 
prepared for it by decay and cessation. If one were to 
tell me that he had that endless longing for immortality, 
of which hitherto I have only heard at second hand, I 
would explain it to him thus : Your life, I would say, 
not being yet complete, still growing, feels in itself the 
onward impulse of growth, and, unable to think of itself 
as other than complete, interprets that onward impulse 
as belonging to the time around it instead of the nature 
within it. Or rather let me say, the man feels in him- 
self the elements of more, and not being able to grasp 
the notion of his own completeness, which is so far from 
him, transposes the feeling of growth and sets it beyond 
himself, translating it at the same time into an instinct 


THE RIDE. 


2n 


of duration, a longing after what he calls eternal life. 
But when the man is complete, then comes decay and 
brings its own contentment with it — as will also death, 
when it arrives in its own proper season of fulness and 
ripeness.” 

Helen said nothing in reply; She thought her cousin 
very clever, but could not enjoy what he said — not in 
the face of that sky and in the yet lingering reflec- 
tion of the feelings it had waked in her. He might 
be right, but now, at least, she wanted no more of it. 
She even felt as if she would rather cherish a sweet de- 
ception for the comfort of the moment in which the 
weaver’s shuttle flew, than take to her bosom a cold, 
killing fact. 

Such were indeed an unworthy feeling to follow ! Of 
all things let us have the truth — even of fact ! But to 
deny what we can not prove, not even casts into our ice- 
house a spadeful of snow. What if the warm hope de- 
nied should be the truth after all? What if it was the 
truth in it that drew the soul towards it by its indwell- 
ing reality, and its relations with her being, even while 
she took blame for suffering herself to be enticed by a 
sweet deception ? Alas indeed for men if the life and the 
truth are not one, but fight against each other ! Surely 
it says something for the divine nature of him that de- 
nies the divine, when he yet cleaves to what he thinks 
the truth, although it denies the life, and blots the way 
to the better from every chart ! 

And what were you thinking of, George ? ” said 
Helen, willing to change the subject. 


212 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


** I was thinking,” he answered, “ — let me see ! — oh ! 
yes. I was thinking of that very singular case of mur- 
der. You must have seen it in the newspapers. I have 
long had a doubt whether I were better fitted for a bar- 
rister or a detective. I can’t keep my mind off a puzzling 
case. You must have heard of this one — the girl they 
found lying in her ball-dress in the middle of a wood, 
stabbed to the heart? ” 

I do remember something of it,” answered Helen, 
gathering a little courage to put into her voice from the 
fact that her cousin could hardly see her face. “ Then 
the murderer has not been discovered? ” 

‘‘That is the point of interest. Not a trace of him ! 
Not a soul suspected, even ! ” 

Helen drew a deep breath, 

“ Had it been in Rome, now ! ” George went on. 
“ But in a quiet country place in England ! The thing 
seems incredible ! So artistically done ! — no struggle : 
just one blow right to the heart, and the assassin gone 
as if by magic ! No weapon dropped ! Nothing to 
give a clue ! The whole thing suggests a practised 
hand. But why such a one for the victim ! Had it 
been some false member of a secret society thus immo- 
lated, one could understand it. But a merry girl at a 
ball ! It is strange. I should like to try the unravelling 
‘ of it.” 

“ Has nothing, then, been done ! ” said Helen with a 
gasp, to hide which she moved in her saddle as if read- 
justing her habit. 

“ Oh ! every thing — of course ! There was instant pur- 


THE RIDE. 


213 


suit on the discovery of the body, but they seem to have 
got on the track of the wrong man — or indeed, for any 
thing certain, of no man at all. A coast-guardsman says 
that, on the night, or rather morning, in question, he 
was approaching a little cove on the shore, not above a 
mile from the scene of the tragedy, with an eye on 
what seemed to be two fishermen preparing to launch 
their boat, when he saw a third man come running dowm 
the steep slope from -the pastures above, and jump into 
the stern of it. Ere he could reach the spot they were 
off and had hoisted two lug-sails. The moon was in the 
first of her last quarter, and gave light enough for what 
he reported. But when inquiries founded on this evi- 
dence were made, nothing whatever could be discovered 
concerning boat or men. The next morning no fishing- 
boat was lacking, and no fisherman would confess to 
having gone from that cove. The marks of the boat’s keel 
and of the men’s feet on the sand, if there ever were 
any, had been washed out by the tide. It was concluded 
that the thing had been pre-arranged and provided for, 
and that the murderer had escaped, probably to Hol- 
land. Thereupon telegrams were shot in all directions, 
but no news could be gathered of any suspicious landing 
on the opposite coast. There the matter rests, or at 
least has rested for many weeks. Neither parents, rela- 
tives, nor friends appear to have a suspicion of any 
one.” 

“Are there no conjectures as to motives?” asked 
Helen, feeling with joy her power of dissimulation 
gather strength. 


214 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ No end of them. She was a beautiful creature, they 
say, sweet-tempered as a dove, and of course fond of ad- 
miration — whence the conjectures all turn on jealousy. 
The most likely thing seems, that she had some squire 
of low degree, of whom neither parents nor friends 
knew any thing. That they themselves suspect this, ap- 
pears likely from their more than apathy with regard to 
the discovery of the villain. I am strongly inclined to 
take the matter in hand myself.” 

“We must get him out of the country as soon as pos- 
sible,” thought Helen. — “ I should hardly have thought 
it worthy of your gifts, George,” she said, “ to turn po- 
liceman. For my part, I should not relish hunting down 
any poor wretch.” 

“ The sacrifice of individual choice is a claim society 
has upon each of its members,” returned Bascombe. 
“ Every murderer hanged, or, better, imprisoned for life, 
is a gain to the community.” 

Helen said no more, and presently turned homewards, 
on the plea that she must not be longer absent from her 
invalid. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


RACHEL AND HER UNCLE. 


T was nearly dark when they arrived again 
at the lodge. Rachel opened the gate for 
them. Without even a thank you, they rode 
out. She stood for a moment gazing after 
them through the dusk, then turned with a sigh, and 
went into the kitchen, where her uncle sat by the fire 
with a book in his hand. 

How I should like to be as well made as Miss Lin- 
gard ! ” she said, seating herself by the lamp that stood 
on the deal table. It inust be a fine thing to be strong 
and tall, and able to look this way and that without 
turning all your body along with your head, like the 
old man that gathers the leeches in Wordsworth’s 
poem. And what it must be to sit on a horse as she 
does ! You should have seen her go flying like the 
very wind across the park ! You would have thought 
she and her horse were cut of the same piece. I’m 
dreadfully envious, uncle.” 

‘‘ No, my child ; I know you better than you do your- . 

215 



2I6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


self. There is a great difference between / wish I was 
and I should like to be — as much as between a grumble 
and a prayer. To be content is not to be satisfied. No 
one ought to be satisfied with the imperfect. It is God’s 
will that we should bear, and contentedly — because in 
hope, looking for the redemption of the body. And we 
know he has a ready servant who will one day set us 
free.” 

Yes, uncle ; I understand. You know I enjoy life : 
how could I help it and you with me? But I don’t 
think I ever go through the churchyard without feeling 
a sort of triumph. *• There’s for you ! ’ I say sometimes 
to the little crooked shadow that creeps along by my 
side across the graves. ‘ You^W soon be caught and put 
inside ! ’ But how am I to tell 1 mayn t be crooked in 
the next world as well as this? That's what troubles 
me at times. There might be some necessity for it, 
you know.” 

“ Then will there be patience to bear it there also ; — 
that you may be sure of. But I do not fear. It were 
more likely that those who have not thanked God, but 
prided themselves, that they were beautiful in this world, 
should be crooked in the next. It would be like Dives 
and Lazarus, you know. But God does what is best for 
them as well as for us. We shall find one day that 
beauty and riches were the best things for those to 
whom they were given, as deformity and poverty were 
the best for us.” 

<< I wonder what sort of person I would have been 
if I had had a straight spine ! ” said Rachel, laughing. 


RACHEL AND HER UNCLE. 


217 


‘‘ Hardly one so dear to your deformed uncle,” said 
her companion in ugliness. 

Then I’m glad I am as I am,” rejoined Rachel. 

** This conscious individuality of ours,” said Polwarth, 
after a thoughtful silence, ** is to me an awful thing — 
the one thing that seems in humanity like the onliness 
of God. Mine terrifies me sometimes — looking a stran- 
ger to me — a limiting of myself — a breaking in upon my 
existence — like a volcanic outburst into the blue Sicilian 
air. When it thus manifests itself, I find no refuge but 
the offering of it back to him who thought it worth 
making. I say to him, ^ Lord, it is thine, not mine ; 
see to it. Lord. Thou and thy eternity are mine. Father 
of Jesus Christ.’ ” 

He covered his eyes with his hands, and his lips grew 
white and trembled. Thought had turned into prayer, 
and both were silent for a space. Rachel was the first 
to speak. 

“ I think I understand, uncle,” she said. I don’t 
mind being God’s dwarf. But I would rather be made 
after his own image : this can’t be it. I should like to 
be made over again.” 

** And if the hope we are saved by be no mockery, if 
St. Paul was not the fool of his own radiant imaginings, 
you will be, my child. But now let us forget our mis- 
erable bodies. Come up to my room, and I will read 
you a few lines that came to me this morning in the 
park.’^ 

« Won’t you wait for Mr. Wingfold, uncle? He will 
be here yet, I think. It can’t be ten o’clock yet. He 


2i8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


always looks in on Saturdays as he goes home from his 
walk. I should like you to read them to him too. They 
will do him good, I know.” 

“ I would, my dear, willingly, if I thought he would 
care for them. But I don’t think he would. They are 
not good enough verses. He has been brought up on 
Horace, and I fear counts the best poetry the neatest.” 

I think you must be mistaken there, uncle ; T have 
heard him talk delightfully about poetry.” 

“ You must excuse me if I am shy of reading my poor 
work to any but yourself, Rachel. My heart was so 
much in it, and the subject is so sacred — ” 

“ I am sorry you should think your pearls too good to 
cast before Mr, Wingfold, uncle,” said Rachel, with a 
touch of disappointed temper. 

*‘Nay, nay, child ! ” returned Polwarth, ‘‘ that was not 
a good thing to say. What gives me concern is that 
there is so much of the rough dirty shell sticking about 
them, that to show them would be to wrong the truth 
in them.” 

Rachel seldom took long to repent. She came slowly 
to her uncle, where he stood with the lamp in his hand, 
looking in his face with a heavenly contrition, and say- 
ing nothing. When she reached him, she dropped on 
her knees and kissed the hand that hung by his side. 
Her temper was poor Rachel’s one sore-felt trouble. 

Polwarth stooped and kissed her on the forehead, 
raised her, and leading her to the stair, stood aside to 
let her go first. But when she had been naughty Ra- 
chel would never go before her uncle, and she drew 


RACHEL AND HER UNCLE. 


219 


back. With a smile of intelligence he yielded and led 
the way. But ere they had climbed to the top, Rachel 
heard Mr. Wingfold’s step, and went down again to re- 
ceive him. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


A DREAM. 



NVITED to ascend, Wingfold followed Rachel 
to her uncle’s room, and there, whether 
guided by her or not, the conversation pres- 
ently took such a turn that at length, of his 
own motion, Polwarth offered to read his verses. From 
the drawer of his table he took a scratched and scored 
half-sheet, and — not in the most melodious of voices, 
yet in one whose harshness and weakness could not 
cover a certain refinement of spiritual tenderness — read 
as follows : 


Lord, hear my discontent : All blank I stand, 

A mirror polished by thy hand ; 

Thy sun’s beams flash and flame from me— 

I can not help it ; here I stand, there he ; 

To one of them I can not say, 

Go, and on yonder water play. 

Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion — 

I do not make the words of this my limping passion, 
220 


A DREAM. 


221 


If I should say, Now I will think a thought, 

Lo ! I must wait, unknowing, 

What thought in me is growing, 

Until the thing to birth is brought; 

Nor know I then w'hat next will come 
From out the gulf of silence dumb. 

I am the door the thing did find 
To pass into the general mind ; 

I can not say I think — 

I only stand upon the thought-well’s brink ; 

From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up — 

I lift it in my cup. 

Thou only thinkest — I am thought ; 

Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought 
Am I but as a fountain spout 
From which thy water welleth out. 

Thou art the only One, the All in all. 

— Yet w'hen my soul on thee doth call 
And thou dost answer out of everywhere, 

I in thy allness have my perfect share. 

While he read Rachel crept to his knee, knelt down, 
and hid her head upon it. 

If we are but the creatures of a day, yet surely were 
the shadow-joys of this miserable pair not merely no- 
bler in their essence, but finer to the soul’s palate than 
the shadow-joys of young Hercules Bascombe — Helen 
and horses and all ! Poor Helen I can^ not use for 
comparison, for she had no joy, save, indeed, the very 
divine, though at present unblossoming, one of sisterly 
love. Still, and notwithstanding, if the facts of life are 


222 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


those of George Bascombe’s indorsing — and he can prove 
ity let us by all means learn and accept them, be they the 
worst possible. Meantime there are truths that ought 
to be facts, and until he has proved that there is no 
God, some of us will go feeling after him if haply we 
may find him, and in him the truths we long to find 
true. Some of us perhaps think we have seen him 
from afar, but we only know the better that in the 
mood wherein such as Bascombe are they will never 
find him — which would no doubt be to them a comfort 
were it not for a laughter. And if he be such as their 
idea of what we think him, they are better without him. 
If on the contrary he be what some of us really think 
him, their not seeking him will not perhaps prevent him 
from finding them. 

From likeness of nature, community of feeling, con- 
stant intercourse, and perfect confidence, Rachel under- 
stood her uncle’s verses with sufficient ease to enjoy 
them at once in part, and, for the rest, to go on thinking 
in the direction in which they would carry her; but 
Wingfold, in whom honesty of disposition had blossomed 
at last into honesty of will and action, after fitting 
pause, during which no word was spoken, said, 

Mr. Polwarth, where verse is concerned I am simply 
stupid : when read, I can not follow it. I did not under- 
stand the half of that poem. I never have been a stu- 
dent of English verse, and indeed that part of my nature 
which has to do with poetry has been a good deal neg- 
lected. Will you let me take those verses home with 
me? ” 


A DREAM. 


223 


“ I can not do that, for they are not legible ; but I will 
copy them out for you.” 

“Will you give me them to-morrow? Shall you be 
at church? ” 

“ That shall be just as you please : would you rather 
have me there or not? ” 

“ A thousand times rather,” answered the curate. 
“ To have one man there who knows what I mean bet- 
ter than I can say it, is to have a double soul and dou- 
ble courage. — But I came to-night mainly to tell you 
that I have been much puzzled this last week to know 
how I ought to regard the Bible — I mean as to its inspi- 
ration. What am I to say about it? ” 

“ Those are two distinct things. Why think of saying 
about it before you have any thing to say ? For your- 
self, however, let me ask if you have not already found 
in the book the highest means of spiritual education 
and development you have yet met with ? If so, may 
not that suffice for the present? It is the man Christ 
Jesus we have to know, and the Bible we have to use to 
that end — not for theory or dogma. — I will tell you a 
strange dream I had once, not long ago.” 

Rachel’s face brightened. She rose, got a little stool, 
and setting it down close by the chair on which her un- 
cle was perched, seated herself at his feet, with her eyes 
on the ground, to listen. 

“ About two years ago,” said Polwarth, “ a friend sent 
me Tauchnitz’s edition of the English New Testament, 
which has the different readings of the three oldest 
known manuscripts translated at the foot of the page. 


224 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


The edition was prepared chiefly for the sake of show- 
ing the results of the collation of the Sinaitic manu- 
script, the oldest of all, so named because it was found 
— a few years ago, by Tischendorf — in a monastery on 
Mount Sinai — nowhere else than there ! I received it 
with such exultation as brought on an attack of asthma, 
and I could scarce open it for a week, but lay with it 
under my pillow. When I did come to look at it, my 
main wonder was to find the differences from the 
common version so few and small. Still there were 
some such as gave rise to a feeling far above mere in- 
terest — one in particular, the absence of a word that had 
troubled me, not seeming like a word of our Lord, or 
consonant with his teaching. I am unaware whether 
the passage has ever given rise to controversy.” 

‘‘ May I ask what word it was? ” interrupted Wingfold 
eagerly. 

“ I will not say,” returned Polwarth. Not having 
troubled you, you would probably only wonder why it 
should have troubled me. For my purpose in men- 
tioning the matter, it is enough to say that I had turned 
with eagerness to the passage wherein it occurs, as given 
in two of the gospels in our version. Judge my delight in 
discovering that in the one gospel the whole passage was 
omitted by the two oldest manuscripts, and in the other 
just the one word that had troubled me by the same two. 
I would not have you suppose me foolish enough to ima- 
gine that the oldest manuscript must be the most cor- 
rect ; but you will at once understand the sense of room 
and air which the discovery gave me notwithstanding. 


A DREAM. 


225 


and I mention it because it goes both to account for the 
dream that followed and to enforce its truth. Pray do 
not, however, imagine me a believer in dreams more 
than in any other source of mental impressions. If a 
dream reveal a principle, that principle is a revelation, 
and the dream is neither more nor less valuable than a 
waking thought that does the same. The truth con- 
veyed is the revelation. I do not deny that facts have 
been learned in dreams, but I would never call the com- 
munication of a mere fact a revelation. Truth alone, 
beheld as such by the soul, is worthy of the name. 
Facts, how’ever, may themselves be the instruments of 
such revelation. ’ 

“ The dream I am now going to tell you was clearly 
enough led up to by my waking thoughts. For I had 
been saying to myself ere I fell asleep, ‘ On the very 
Mount Sinai that once burned with heavenly fire and 
resounded with the thunder of a visible Presence, now 
old and cold, and swathed in the mists of legend and 
doubt, was discovered the most reverend, because most 
ancient, record of the new dispensation which dethroned 
that mountain and silenced the thunders of the peda- 
gogue law ! Is it not possible that yet, in some ancient 
convent, insignificant to the eye of the traveller as mo- 
dern Nazareth would be but for its ancient story, some 
one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful 
and unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist? 
O lovely parchment ! ’ I thought — if eye of man 
might but see thee ! if lips of man might kiss thee ! * 
and mv heart swelled like the heart of a lover at the 

15 


226 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


thought of such a boon. Now, as you know, I live in a 
sort of live coffin here,” continued the little man, strik- 
ing his pigeon-breast, ‘‘ with a barrel-organ of dis- 
cords in it, constantly out of order in one way or an- 
other ; and hence it comes that my sleep is so imperfect, 
and my dreams run more than is usual, as I believe, on 
in the direction of my last waking thoughts. Well, that 
night, I dreamed thus : I was in a desert. It was neither 
day nor night to me. I saw neither sun, moon, nor 
stars. A heavy yet half-luminous cloud hung over the 
visible earth. My heart was beating fast and high, for 
I was journeying towards a certain Armenian convent, 
where I had good ground for hoping I should find the 
original manuscript of the fourth gospel, the very hand- 
writing of the apostle John. That the old man did not 
write it himself, I never thought of that in my dream. 

“ After I had walked on for a long, any thing but weary 
time, I saw the level horizon line before me broken by 
a rock, as it seemed, rising from the plain of the desert. 
I knew it was the monastery. It was many miles away, 
and as I journeyed on, it grew and grew, until it swelled 
huge as a hill against the sky. At length I came up to 
the door, iron-clamped, deep-set in a low, thick wall. It 
stood wide open. I entered, crossed a court, reached 
the door of the monastery itself, and again entered. 
Every door to which I came stood open, but priest nor 
guide came to meet me, and I saw no man, and at length 
looked for none, but used my best judgment to get deep- 
er and deeper into the building, for I scarce doubted 
that in its inmost penetralia I should find the treasure I 


A DREAM. 


227 


sought. At last I stood before a door hung with a cur- 
tain of rich workmanship, torn in the middle from top 
to bottom. Through the rent I passed into a stone cell. 
In the cell stood a table. On the table was a closed 
book. Oh ! how my heart beat ! Never but then have I 
known the feeling of utter preciousness in a thing pos- 
sessed. What doubts and fears would not this one 
lovely, oh ! unutterably beloved volume, lay at rest for- 
ever ! How my eyes would dwell upon every stroke of 
every letter the hand of the dearest disciple had formed ! 
Nearly eighteen hundred years — and there it lay ! — and 
there was a man who did hear the Master say the words, 
and did set them down ! I stood motionless, and my 
soul seemed to wind itself among the leaves, while my 
body stood like a pillar of salt, lost in its own gaze. At 
last, with sudden daring, I made a step towards the ta- 
ble, and, bending with awe, outstretched my hand to lay 
it upon the book. But ere my hand reached it, another 
hand, from the opposite side of the table, appeared upon 
it — an old, blue-veined, but powerful hand. I looked 
up. There stood the beloved disciple ! His counte- 
nance was as a mirror from which shone back the face 
of the Master. Slowly he lifted the book, and turned 
away. Then first I saw behind him as it were an altar 
whereon a fire of wood was burning, and a pang of dis- 
may shot to my heart, for I knew what he was about to 
do. He laid the book on the burning wood, and re- 
garded it with a smile as it shrunk and shrivelled and 
smouldered to ashes. Then he turned to me and said, 
while a perfect heaven of peace shone in his eyes : < Son 


228 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


of man, the Word of God liveth and abideth forever, not 
in the volume of the book, but in the heart of the man 
that in love obeyeth him.’ And therewith I awoke 
weeping, but with the lesson of my dream.” 

A deep silence fell on the little company. Then said 
Wingfold, 

I trust I have the lesson too.” 

He rose, shook hands with them, and, without an- 
other word, went home. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


ANOTHER sermon. 

T often seems to those in earnest about the 
right as if all things conspired to prevent 
their progress. This, of course, is but an ap- 
pearance, arising in part from this, that the 
pilgrim must be headed back from the side-paths into 
which he is constantly wandering. To Wingfold, how- 
ever, it seemed that all things fell in to further his 
quest, which will not be so surprising if we remember 
that his was no intermittent repentant seeking, but 
the struggle of his whole energy. And there are 
those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer 
to the kingdom of heaven than many who have 
for years believed themselves of it. In the former 
there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when he calls 
them, they recognise him at once and go after him; 
while the others examine him from head to foot, and 
finding him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their con- 
ception, turn their backs, and go to church or chapel 
or chamber to kneel before a vague form mingled of 
229 



230 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


tradition and fancy. But the first shall be last and the 
last first, and there are from whom, be it penny or be 
it pound, what they have must be taken away because 
with them it lies useless. 

For Wingfold, he soon found that his nature was be- 
ing stirred to depths unsuspected before. Hitherto no- 
thing had ever roused him to genuine activity : his histo- 
ry was not very happy, his life not very interesting, his 
work not congenial, and paying itself in no satisfaction, 
his pleasures of a cold and common intellectual sort, he 
had dragged along, sustained, without the sense of its 
sustentation, by the germ within him of a slowly-devel- 
oping honesty. But now that Conscience had got up 
into the guard’s seat, and Will had taken the reins, he 
found all his intellectual faculties in full play, keeping 
well together, heads up and traces tight, while the out- 
rider Imagination, with his spotted dog Fancy, was 
always far ahead, but never beyond the sound of the 
guard’s horn ; and ever as they went, object after object 
hitherto beyond the radius of his interest rose on the 
horizon of question, and began to glimmer in the dawn 
of human relation. 

His first sermon is enough to show that he had begun 
to have thoughts of his own — a very different thing from 
the entertaining of the thoughts of others, however well 
we may feed and lodge them — thoughts .which came to 
him not as things which sought an entrance, but as 
things that sought an exit — cried for forms of embodi- 
ment that they might pass out of the infinite, and by in- 
carnation become communicable. 


ANOTHER SERMON. 


231 


The news of that strange first sermon had of course 
spread through the town, and the people came to church 
the next Sunday in crowds — twice as many as the usual 
assembly — some who went seldom, some who went no- 
where, some who belonged to other congregations and 
communities — mostly bent on witnessing whatever ec- 
centricity the very peculiar young man might be guilty 
of next, but having a few among them who were sym- 
pathetically interested in seeing how far his call, if call 
it was, would lead him. 

His second sermon was to the same purport as the 
first. Proposing no text, he spoke to the following 
effect, and indeed the following are of the very words he 
uttered : 

“The church wherein you now listen, my hearers, 
the pulpit wherein I now speak, stand here from of old 
in the name of Christianity. What is Christianity? I 
know but one definition, the analysis of which, if the 
thing in question be a truth, must be the joyous labor 
of every devout heart to all eternity. For Christianity 
does not mean what you think or what I think con- 
cerning Christ, but what is Christ. My Christianity, 
if ever I come to have any, will be what of Christ is in 
me ; your Christianity now is what of Christ is in you. 
Last Sunday I showed you our Lord’s very words — that 
he, and no other, was his disciple who did what he told 
him — and said, therefore, that I dared not call myself a 
disciple. I say the same thing in saying now that I dare 
not call myself a Christian, lest I should offend him with 
my ‘ Lord, Lord ! ’ Still it is, and I can not now help 


232 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


it, in the name of Christianity that I here stand. I have 
— alas ! with blameful and appalling thoughtlessness ! — 
subscribed my name, as a believer, to the articles of the 
Church of England, with no better reason than that I 
was unaware of any dissent therefrom, and have been 
ordained one of her ministers. The relations into which 
this has brought me I do not feel justified in severing at 
once, lest I should therein seem to deny that which its 
own illumination may yet show me to be true, and I desire 
therefore a little respite and room for thought and re- 
solve. But meantime it remains my business, as an 
honest man in the employment of the church, to do my 
best towards the setting forth of the claims of him upon 
whom that church is founded, and in whose name she 
exists. As one standing on the outskirts of a listening 
Galilean crowd, a word comes now and then to my hun- 
gry ears and hungrier heart : I turn and tell it again to 
you — not that ye have not heard it also, but that I may 
stir you up to ask yourselves : ^ Do I then obey this 
word ? Have I ever, have I once, sought to obey it ? 
Am I a pupil of Jesus? Am I a Christian?’ Hear 
then of his words. For me, they fill my heart with 
doubt and dismay. 

The Lord says. Love your enemies, Sayest thou. It 
is impossible ? Then dost thou mock the word of him 
who said, / a7n the Truth, and hast no part in him. 
Sayest thou, Alas / I can not ? Thou sayest true, I doubt 
not. But hast thou tried whether he who made will not 
increase the strength put forth to obey him? 

‘‘ The Lord says, Be ye perfect. Dost thou then aim 


ANOTHER SERMON. 


233 


after perfection, or dost thou excuse thy willful short- 
comings, and say To err is human — nor hopest that 
it may also be found human to grow divine? Then ask 
thyself, for thou hast good cause, whether thou hast 
any part in him. 

The Lord said. Lay not up for yourselves treasures on 
earth. My part is not now to preach against the love 
of money, but to ask you. Are you laying up for your- 
selves treasures on earth? As to what the command 
means, the honest heart and the dishonest must each set- 
tle it in his own way ; but if your heart condemn you, 
what I have to say is. Call not yourselves Christians, 
but consider whether you ought not to become disciples 
indeed. No doubt you can instance this, that, and the 
other man who does as you do, and of whom yet no man 
dreams of questioning the Christianity : it matters not 
a hair ; all that goes but to say that you are pagans to- 
gether. Do not mistake me : I judge you not. But I 
ask you, as mouthpiece most unworthy of that Christi- 
anity in the name of which this building stands and we 
are met therein, to judge your own selves by the words 
of its founder. 

“The Lord said. Take no thought for your life. Take 
no thought for the morrow. Explain it as you may or 
can ; but ask yourselves, Do I take no thought for my 
life? Do I take no thought for the morrow? and an- 
swer to yourselves whether or no ye are Christians. 

“The Lord says, fudge not. Didst thou judge thy 
neighbor yesterday? Wilt thou judge him again to- 
morrow? Art thou judging him now in the very heart 


234 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


that within thy bosom sits hearing the words Judge not ? 
Or wilt thou ask yet again, Who is my neighbor? 
How then canst thou look to be of those that shall^ en- 
ter through the gates into the city? I tell thee not, for 
I profess not yet to know any thing, but doth not thine 
own profession of Christianity counsel thee to fall up- 
on thy face, and cry to him whom thou mockest, * I am 
a sinful man, O Lord ’ ? 

‘‘The Lord said. All things whatsoever ye would that 
me7i should do to you, do ye even so to them. Ye that buy 
and sell, do you obey this law? Examine yourselves and 
see. Ye would that men should deal fairly by you : do 
you deal fairly by them as ye would count fairness in 
them to you? If conscience makes you hang the head 
inwardly, however you sit with it erect in the pew, dare 
you add to your crime against the law and the prophets 
the insult to Christ of calling yourselves his disciples? 

“ Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the 
will of my Father which is in heaven. He will none but 
those who with him do the will of the Father.” 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


NURSING. 

HAVE of course given but the spine and 
ribs, as it were, of the sermon. There is no 
place for more. It is enough, however, 
to show that he came to the point — and 
what can be better in preaching? Certainly he was 
making the best of the blunder that had led him up 
into that pulpit ! And on the other hand, whatever 
might be the various judgments and opinions of his 
hearers in respect of the sermon — a thing about which 
the less any preacher allows himself to think the better 
— many of them did actually feel that he had been 
preaching to them, which is saying much. Even Mrs. 
Ramshorn was more silent than usual as they went 
home, and although — not having acquainted herself, 
amongst others, with the sermons of Latimer — she was 
profoundly convinced that such preaching was alto- 
gether contrary to the tradition, usage, and tone of the 
English Church, of which her departed dean remaiiied 
to her the unimpeachable embodiment and type, the 
sole remark she made was that Mr Wingfold took quite 

235 



236 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


too much pains to prove himself a pagan. Mr. Bas- 
combe was in the same mind as before. 

“ I like the fellow,” he said. He says what he 
means, fair and full, and no shilly-shallying. It’s all 
great rubbish, of course ! ” 

And the widow of the dean of blessed memory had not 
a word to say in defense of the sermon, but, for her, let 
it go as the great rubbish he called it. Indeed, not 
knowing the real mind of her nephew, she was nothing 
less than gratified to hear from him an opinion so com- 
fortably hostile to that of this most uncomfortable of 
curates, whom you never could tell where to have, and 
whom never since he had confessed to wrong in the read- 
ing of his uncle’s sermons, and thus unwittingly cast a 
reproach upon the memory of him who had departed 
from the harassed company of deans militant to the 
blessed company of deans triumphant, had she invited 
to share at her table of the good things left behind. 

Why don’t you ask him home to dinner, aunt?” 
said Bascombe, after a pause unbroken by Mrs. Rams- 
horn. 

<< Why should I, George? ” returned his aunt. Has 
he not been abusing us all at a most ignorant and furi- 
ous rate? ” 

Oh ! I didn’t know,” said the nephew, and held his 
peace. Nor did the aunt perceive the sarcasm for the 
sake of pointing which he was silent. But it was not 
lost, and George was paid in full by the flicker of a faint 
smile across Helen’s face. 

As for Helen, the sermon had indeed laid a sort of 


NURSING. 


237 


feebly electrical hold upon her, the mere nervous influ- 
ence of honesty and earnestness. But she could not 
accuse herself of having ever made a prominent profes- 
sion of Christianity, confirmation and communion not- 
withstanding ; and besides, had she not now all but ab- 
jured the whole thing in her heart? so that if every 
word of what he said was true, not a word of it could be 
applied to her ! and what time had she to think about 
such far-away things as had happened eighteen centu- 
ries ago, when there was her one darling pining away 
with a black weight on his heart ! 

For, although Leopold was gradually recovering, a 
supreme dejection, for which his weakness was insuffi- 
cient to account, prostrated his spirit, and at length 
drove Mr. Faber to ask Helen whether she knew of any 
disappointment or other source of mental suffering 
that could explain it. She told him of the habit he had 
formed, and asked whether his being deprived of the 
narcotic might not be the cause. He accepted the sug- 
gestion, and set himself, not without some success, to 
repair the injury the abuse had occasioned. Still, al- 
though his physical condition plainly improved, the de- 
jection continued, and Mr. Faber was thrown back upon 
his former conjecture. Learning nothing, however, and 
yet finding that, as he advanced towards health, his de- 
jection plainly deepened, he began at length to fear 
softening of the brain, but could discover no other 
symptom of such disease. 

The earnestness of the doctor’s quest after a cause 
for what any one might observe added greatly to Hel- 


238 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


en’s uneasiness ; and besides, the fact itself began to 
undermine the hope of his innocence which had again 
sprung up and almost grown to assurance in the ab- 
sence of any fresh contradiction from without. Also, as 
his health returned, his sleep became more troubled ; 
he dreamed more, and showed by his increased agi- 
tation in his dreams that they were more painful. In 
this respect his condition was at the worst always be- 
tween two and three o’clock in the morning ; and hav- 
ing perceived this fact, Helen would never allow any 
one to sit up with him the first part of the night ex- 
cept herself. 

Increased anxiety and continued watching soon told 
upon her health yet more severely, and she lost appetite 
and complexion. Still she slept well during the latter 
part of the morning, and was always down before her 
aunt had finished breakfast; and it was in vain that 
aunt and doctor and nurse all expostulated with her 
upon the excess of her ministration : nothing should 
make her yield her post until her brother was himself 
again. Nor was she without her reward, and that a 
sufficing one — in the love and gratitude with which Leo- 
pold clung to her. 

During the day, also, she spent every moment, except 
such as she passed in the open air and at table with her 
aunt, by his bedside, reading and talking to him ; but 
yet not a single allusion had been made to the fright- 
ful secret. 

At length he was so much better that there was no 
longer need for any one to sit up with him ; but then 


NURSING. 


239 


Helen had her bed put in the dressing-room that at one 
o’clock she might be by his side, to sit there until three 
should be well over and gone. 

Thus she gave up her whole life to him, and doubtless 
thereby gained much fresh interest in it for herself. 
But the weight of the secret and the dread of the law 
were too much for her, and were gradually undermin- 
ing that strength of dissimulation in which she had 
trusted, and which, in respect of cheerfulness, she had 
to exercise towards her brother as well as her aunt. 
She struggled hard, for if those weak, despairing eyes of 
his were to encounter weakness and despair in hers, 
madness itself would be at the door for both. She had 
come nearly to the point of discovering that the soul is 
not capable of generating its own requirements, that 
it needs to be supplied from a well whose springs lie 
deeper than its own soil, in the infinite All, namely, 
upon which that soil rests. Happy they who have 
found that those springs have an outlet in their hearts 
— on the hill of prayer. 

It was very difficult to lay her hands on reading that 
suited him. Gifted with a glowing yet delicate east- 
ern imagination, pampered and all but ruined, he was 
impatient of narratives of common life, whose current 
bore him to a reservoir and no sea ; while, on the other 
hand, some tales that seemed to Helen poverty-stricken 
flats of nonsense, or jumbles of false invention, would 
in her brother wake an interest she could not under- 
stand, appearing to afford him outlooks into regions 
to her unknown. But from the moral element in any 


240 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Story he shrank visibly. She tried the German tales 
collected by the brothers Grimm, so popular with chil- 
dren of all ages ; but on the very first attempt she blun- 
dered into an awful one of murder and vengeance, in 
which, if the drawing was untrue, the color was strong, 
and had to blunder clumsily out of it again, with a hot 
face and a cold heart. At length she betook herself to 
the Thousand and One Nights, which she had never 
read, and found very dull, but which with Leopold 
served for what book could do. 

In the rest of the house things went on much the 
same. Old friends and their daughters called on Mrs. 
Ramshorn and inquired after the invalid, and George 
Bascombe came almost every Saturday, and stayed till 
Monday. But the moment the tide of her trouble be- 
gan again to rise, Helen found herself less desirous of 
meeting one from whom she could hope neither help nor 
cheer. It might be that future generations of the death- 
doomed might pass their poor life a little more comfort- 
ably that she had not been a bad woman, and she might 
be privileged to pass away from the world, as George 
taught her, without earning the curses of those that 
came after her ; but there was her precious brother ly- 
ing before her with a horrible worm gnawing at his 
heart, and what to her were a thousand generations un- 
born ! Rather with Macbeth she might well wish the 
estate o’ the world were now undone ” — most of all 
when, in the silent watches of the night, as she sat by 
the bedside of her beloved and he slept, his voice would 


NURSING. 


241 


come murmuring out of a dream, sounding so far away 
that it seemed as if his spirit only and not his lips had 
spoken the words, ** O Helen ! darling, give me my 
knife. Why will you not let me die.? 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


GLASTON AND THE CURATE. 

E, the sun rose and set, never a crim- 
hread the less in the garment of his 
that the spirit of one of the children 
e earth was stained with blood-guilti- 
ness ; the moon came up and knew nothing of the mat- 
ter ; the stars minded their own business * and the peo- 
ple of Glaston were talking about their curate’s ser- 
mons. Alas ! it was about his sermons and not the sub- 
ject of them that men talked, their interest mainly 
roused by their peculiariiyy and what some called the 
oddity of the preacher. 

What had come to him ? He was not in the least like 
that for months after his appointment, and the change 
came all at once ! Yes, it began with those extrava- 
gant notions about honesty in writing his own sermons ! 
It might have been a sunstroke, but it took him far 
too early in the year for that ! Softening of the brain 
it might be, poor fellow ! Was not excessive vanity 
sometimes a symptom? Poor fellow ! 

242 



FLASTON AND THE CURATE. 


243 


So said some. But others said he was a clever fellow, 
and long'headed enough to know that that sort of thing 
attracted attention, and might open the way to a bene- 
fice, or at least an engagement in London, where elo- 
quence was of more account than in a dead-and-alive 
country place like Glaston, from which the tide of grace 
had ebbed, leaving that great ship of the church, the 
Abbey, high and dry on the shore. 

Others again judged him a fanatic — a dangerous man. 
Such did not all venture to assert that he had erred 
from the way, but what man was more dangerous than 
he who went too far? Possibly these forgot that the 
narrow way can hardly be one to sit down in comforta- 
bly, or indeed to be entered at all save by him who tries 
the gate with the intent of going all the way — even 
should it lead up to the perfection of the Father in 
heaven. “ But,” they would in effect have argued, ^Gs 
not a fanatic dangerous ? and is not an enthusiast always 
in peril of becoming a fanatic ? Be his enthusiasm for 
what it may — for Jesus Christ, for God himself — such 
a man is dangerous, most dangerous ! There are so 
many things comfortably settled, like Presumption’s 
tubs, upon their own bottoms, which such men would, if 
they could, at once upset and empty ! ” 

Others suspected a Romanizing drift in the whole 
affair. “ Wait until he gathers influence,” they said, and 
a handful of followers, and then you’ll see ! They’ll be 
all back to Rome together in a month ! ” 

As the wind took by the tail St. Peter’s cock on the 
church-spire and whirled it about, so did the wind of 


244 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


words in Glaston rudely seize and flack hither and thith- 
er the spiritual reputation of Thomas Wingfold, curate. 
And all the time the young man was wrestling, his life 
in his hand, with his own unbelief ; while upon his hori- 
zon ever and anon rose the glimmer of a great aurora or 
the glimpse of a boundless main — if only he could have 
been sure they were no mirage of his own parched heart 
and hungry eye ; that they were thoughts in the mind 
of the Eternal, and therefore had appeared in his, even 
as the Word was said to have become flesh and dwelt 
with men ! The next moment he would be gasping in 
that malarious exhalation from the marshes of his 
neglected heart — the counter-fear, namely, that the word 
under whose potent radiance the world seemed on the 
verge of budding forth and blossoming as the rose was 
too good to be true. 

‘‘Yes, much too good, if there be no living, self- will- 
ing God,” said Polwarth one evening, in answer to the 
phrase just dropped from his lips. “ But if there be 
such a God as alone could be God, can any thing be too 
good to be true — too good for such a God as contented 
Jesus Christ? ” 

At one moment he was ready to believe every thing, 
even to that strangest, yet to me right credible, miracle 
of the fish and the piece of money, and the next to 
doubt whether man had ever dared utter the words, “ I 
and the Father are one.” Tossed he was and tormented 
in spirit, calling even aloud sometimes to know if there 
was a God anywhere hearing his prayer, sure only of 
this, that whatever else any being might be, if he heard 


GLASTON AND THE CURATE. 


245 


not prayer, he could not be the God for whom his soul 
cried and fainted. Sometimes there came to him, it is 
true, what he would gladly have taken for an answer, 
but it was nothing more than a sudden descent of a kind 
of calmness on his spirit, which, for aught he could tell, 
might be but the calm of exhaustion. His knees were 
sore with kneeling, his face white with thinking, his 
eye dim with trouble ; for when once a man has set out 
to find God, he must find him or die. This was the in- 
side reality whose outcome set the public of Glaston 
babbling. It w’as from this that George Bascombe mag- 
isterially pronounced him a hypochondriac, worrying his 
brain about things that had no existence — as George 
himself could with confidence testify, not once having 
seen the sight of them, heard the sound of them, or 
imagined in his heart that they ought to be, or even that 
they might possibly be. He pronounced, indeed, their 
existence inconsistent with his own. The thought had 
never rippled the gray mass of his self-satisfied brain that 
perhaps there was more of himself than what he counted 
himself yet knew, and that possibly these matters had a 
consistent relation with parts unknown. Poor, pover- 
ty-stricken Wingfold ! actually craving for things be- 
neath Bascombe’ s notice ! actually crying for something 
higher and brighter than the moon ! How independ- 
ent was George compared with Thomas 1 content to 
live what he called his life, be a benefactor to men, 
chiefly in ridding their fancies of the goblins of aspira- 
tion, then die his death, and have done with the busi- 
ness ; while poor, misguided, weak-brained, hypochon- 


246 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


driacal Thomas could be contented with nothing less than 
the fulfillment of the promise of a certain man who per- 
haps never existed r “ The Father and I will come to 
him and make our abode with him.” 

Yet Thomas, too, had his weakness for the testimony of 
the senses. If he did not, like George, refuse to believe 
without it, he yet could not help desiring signs and won- 
ders that he might believe. Of this the following poem 
was a result, and I give it the more willingly because it 
will show how the intellectual nature of the man had 
advanced, borne on the -waves that burst from the 
fountains of the great deep below it : 

0 Lord ! if on the wind, at cool of day, 

I heard one whispered word of mighty grace ; 

If through the darkness, as in bed I lay, 

But once had come a hand upon my face; 

If but one sign that might not be mistook. 

Had ever been, since first thy face I sought, 

1 should not now be doubting o’er a book, 

But serving thee with burning heart and thought. 

So dreams that heart. But to my heart I say, 

Turning my face to front the dark and wind: 

Such signs had only barred anew His way 
Into thee, longing heart, thee, wildered mind. 

They asked the very Way, where lies the way; 

The very Son, where is the Father’s face; 

How he could show himself, if not in clay. 

Who was the Lord of spirit, form, and space ? 


GLASTON AND THE CURATE. 


247 


My being, Lord, will nevermore be whole 
Until thou come behind mine ears and eyes, 
Enter and fill the temple of my soul 

With perfect contact — such a sweet surprise — 

Such presence as, before it met the view. 

The prophet-fancy could not once foresee, 
Though every corner of the temple knew 
By very emptiness its need of thee. 

When I keep all thy words, no favored some — 
Heedless of worldly winds or judgment’s tide. 
Then, Jesus, thou wilt with thy Father come — 

0 ended prayers ! — and in my soul abide. 

Ah ! long delay ! ah ! cunning, creeping sin ! 

1 shall but fail and cease at length to try : 

O Jesus ! though thou wilt not yet come in. 

Knock at my window as thou passest by. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 

r there was yet another class among those 
who on that second day heard the curate 
testify what honestly he might, and no more, 
concerning Jesus of Nazareth. So far as he 
learned, however, that class consisted of one individual. 

On the following Tuesday morning he went into the 
shop of the chief linen-draper of Glaston, for he was 
going to a funeral, and wanted a new pair of gloves that 
he might decline those which would be offered to him. 
A young woman waited on him, but Mr. Drew, seeing 
him from the other end of the shop, came and took her 
place. When he was fitted, had paid for his purchase 
and was turning to take his leave, the draper, with what 
appeared a resolution suddenly forced from hesitation, 
leaned over the counter and said, 

“ Would you mind walking up stairs for a few minutes, 
sir? I ask it as a great favor. I want very much to 
speak to you.” 

** I shall be most happy,” answered Wingfold — con- 
ventionally, it must be allowed, for in reality he antici- 
248 



THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


2^9 


pated expostulation, and having in his public ministra- 
tions to do his duty against his own grain, he had no 
fancy for encountering other people’s grain as well in 
private. Mr. Drew opened certain straits in the coun- 
ter, and the curate followed him through them, then 
through a door, up a stair, and into a comfortable din- 
ing-room, which smelt strongly of tobacco. There Mr. 
Drew placed for him a chair, and seated himself in front 
of him. 

The linen-draper was a middle-aged, middle-sized, 
stoutish man, with plump, rosy cheeks, keen black eyes, 
and features of the not uncommon pug-type, ennobled 
and harmonized by a genuine expression of kindly good- 
humor, and an excellent forehead. His dark hair was a 
little streaked with gray. His manner, w’hich in the shop 
had been of the shop —that is, more deferential and 
would-be pleasing than Wingfold liked — settled, as 
he took his seat, into one more resembling that of a 
country gentleman. It was courteous and friendly, but 
clouded with a little anxiety. 

An uncomfortable pause following. Wingfold stumbled 
in with the question, “ I hope Mrs. Drew is well,” with- 
out reflecting whether he had really ever heard of a 
Mrs. Drew. 

The draper’s face flushed. 

It’s twenty years since I lost her, sir,” he returned. 
In his tone and manner there was something peculiar. 

I beg your pardon,” said Wingfold, with self-accus- 
ing sincerity. 

“I will be open with you, sir,” continued his host; 


2?0 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


she left me — with another — nearly twenty years ago.’^ 
I am ashamed of my inadvertence,” rejoined Wing- 
fold. I have been such a short time here, and — ” 

Do not mention it, sir. How could you help it? 
Besides, it was not here the thing took place, but a hun- 
dred miles away. I hope I should before long have 
referred to the fact myself. But now I desire, if you will 
allow me, to speak of something different.” 

I am at your service,” answered Wingfold. 

Thank you, sir. I was in your church last Sunday,” 
resumed the draper, after a pause. I am not one of your 
regular hearers, sir ; but your sermon that day set me 
thinking, and instead of thinking less when Monday 
came, I have been thinking more and more ever since ; 
and when I saw you in the shop, I could not resist the 
sudden desire to speak to you. If you have time, sir, 1 
hope you will allow me to come to the point my own 
way? ” 

Wingfold assured him that his time was at his own 
disposal, and could not be better occupied. Mr. Drew 
thanked him, and went on. 

Your sermon, I must confess, sir, made me uncom- 
fortable — no fault of yours, sir; all my own; though 
how much the fault is I hardly know : use and custom 
are hard upon a man, sir, and you would have a man go 
by other laws than those of the world he lives in. ‘ The 
earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof,’ you will 
doubtless say. That is over the Royal Exchange in 
London, I think ; but it is not the laws of tne Lord that 
are specially followed inside, for all that. However, it 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


251 


is not with other people we have to do, but with our- 
selves — as you will say. Well, then, it is for myself I am 
troubled now. Mr. Wingfold, sir, I am not altogether 
at ease in my own mind as to the way I have made my mo- 
ney — what little money I have — no great sum, but 
enough to retire upon when I please. I would not have 
you think me worse than I am, but I am sincerely de- 
sirous of knowing what you would have me do.” 

“ My dear sir,” returned Wingfold, “ I am the very 
last to look to for enlightenment. I am as ignorant of 
business as any child. I am not aware that I ever 
bought any thing except books and clothes, or ever sold 
any thing except a knife to a schoolfellow — I had 
bought it the day before for half a crown, but there was 
a spot of rust on one of the blades, and therefore I part- 
ed with it for twopence. The only thing I can say is, 
if you have been in the way of doing any thing you are 
no longer satisfied with, don’t do it any more.” 

“ But just there comes my need of help. You must 
do something with your business, and don't do it don’t 
tell me what to do. Mind, I do not confess to having 
done any thing the trade would count inadmissible, or 
which is not done in the largest establishments. What 
I now make question of I learned in one of the most re- 
spectable of London houses.” 

“ You imply that a man in your line who would not 
do certain things the doing of which has contributed 
to the making of your fortune, would by the ordinary 
dealer be regarded as Quixotic ?” 

He would ; but that there may be such men I am 


252 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


bound to allow, for here arii I wishing with all my heart 
that I had never done them. Right gladly would I give 
up the money I have made by them to be rid of them. 
I am unhappy about it. But I should never have dared 
to confess it to you, sir, or, I believe, to any one, but 
for the confession you made in the pulpit some time 
ago. I was not there, but I heard of it. I foolishly 
judged you unwise to accuse yourself before an unsym- 
pathizing public — but here I am in consequence accus- 
ing myself to you ! ” 

“ To no unsympathizing hearer, though,” said the cu- 
rate. 

“ It made me want to go and hear you preach,” pur- 
sued the draper ; “ for no one could say but it was 
plucky — and we all like pluck, sir,” he added, with a 
laugh that puckered his face, showed the whitest of 
teeth, and swept every sign of trouble from the half- 
globe of his radiant countenance. 

“ Then you know sum and substance of what I can do 
for you, Mr. Drew ; I can sympathize with you ; not a 
whit more or less am I capable of. I am the merest be- 
ginner and dabbler in doing right myself, and have more 
need to ask you to teach me than to set up for teaching 
you.” 

“ That’s the beauty of you ! — excuse me, sir,” cried 
the draper triumphantly. “ You don’t pretend to teach 
us any thing, but you make us so uncomfortable that we 
go about ever after asking ourselves what we ought to 
do. Till last Sunday I had always looked upon myself 
as an honest man ; let me see, it would be more cor- 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


253 


rect to say I looked on myself as a man quite honest 
enough. That I do not feel so now is your doing, sir. 
You said in your sermon last Sunday, and specially to 
business men, ‘ Do you do to your neighbor as you 
would have your neighbor do to you ? If not, how can 
you suppose that the Lord of Christians will acknowl- 
edge you as a disciple of his, that is, as a Christian } ' 
Now, I was even surer of being a Christian than of being 
an honest man. You will hardly believe it, and what to 
think of it myself I hardly know, but I had satisfied my- 
self, more or less, that I had gone through all the nec- 
essary stages of being born again, and it is now many 
years since I was received into a Christian church — dis- 
senting, of course, I mean ; for what I count the most 
important difference after all between church and dis- 
sent is that the one, right or wrong, requires for com- 
munion a personal profession of faith and credible 
proof of conversion — which I believed I gave them, and 
have been for years, I shame to say it, one of the dea- 
cons of that community. But it shall not be for long. 
To return to my story, however : I was indignant at be- 
ing called upon from a church-pulpit to raise in myself 
the question whether or not I was a Christian ; for had 
not I put my faith in the } But I will avoid the- 

ology, for I have paid more regard to that than has 
proved good for me. Suffice it to say that I was now 
driven from the tests of the theologians to try myself 
by the words of the Master — he must be the best theol- 
ogian after all, mustn’t he, sir ? — and so there and then I 
tried the test of doing to your neighbor But I could 


254 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


not get it to work ; I could not see how to use it, and 
while I was trying how to make it apply you were gone, 
and I lost all the rest of the sermon. 

“ Now, whether it was any thing you had said coming 
back to me I can not tell, but next day, that was yester- 
day, all at once, in the shop here, as I was serving Mrs. 
Ramshorn, the thought came to me. How would Jesus 
Christ have done if he had been a draper instead of a 
carpenter } When she was gone, I went up to my room 
to think about it. And there it seemed that first I 
must know how he did as' a carpenter. But that we are 
told nothing about. I could get no light upon that. 
And so my thoughts turned again to the original ques- 
tion, How would he have done had he been a draper } 
And, strange to say, I seemed to know far more about 
that than the other, and to have something to go upon. 
In fact, I had a sharp and decisive answer concerning 
several things of which I had dared to make a question.” 

“ The vision of the ideal woke the ideal in yourself,” 
said Wingfold thoughtfully. 

“I don’t know that I quite understand that,” returned 
Mr. Drew ; “ but the more I thought the more dissatis- 
fied I became. And, in a word, it has come to this, that 
I must set things right or give up business.” 

“ That would be no victory,” remarked the curate. 

“ I know it, and shall not yield without a struggle, 1 
promise you. That same afternoon, taking the oppor- 
tunity of having overheard one of them endeavoring to 
persuade an old farmer’s wife to her disadvantage, I 
called all my people, and told them that if ever I heard 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


255 


one of them do such a thing, I would turn him or her 
away at once. But when I came to look at it, I saw how 
dithcult it would be to convict of the breach of such a 
vague law ; and unfortunately, too, I had some time ago 
introduced the system of a small percentage to the sell- 
ers, making it their interest to force sales. That, how- 
ever, is easily rectified, and I shall see to it at once. But 
1 do wish I had a more definite law to follow than that 
of doing as !” 

“ Would not more light inside do as well as clearer 
law outside ?” suggested Wingfold. 

“ How can I tell till I have had a chance of trying ?” 
returned the draper with a smile, which speedily vanished 
as he went on : “ Then, again, there’s all about profits ! 
How much ought I to take Am I to do as others 
do, and always be ruled by the market } Am 1 bound to 
give my customers the advantage of any special bar- 
gain I may have made } And then again — for I do a 
large wholesale business with the little country shops — ■ 
if I learn that one of my customers is going down-hill, 
have I or have I not a right to pounce upon him and 
make him pay me, to the detriment of his other cred- 
itors There’s no end of questions, you see, sir.” 

“ I am the worst possible man to ask,” returned 
Wingfold, again. “ I might, from very ignorance, judge 
that wrong which is really right, or that right which is 
really wrong. But one thing I begin to see, that before 
a man can do right by his neighbor, he must love him 
as himself. Only I am such a poor scholar in these high 
things that, as you have just said, I can not pretend to 


256 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


teach any body. That sermon was but an appeal to 
men’s own consciences whether they kept the words of 
the Lord by whose name they called themselves. Ex- 
cept in your case, Mr. Drew, I am not aware that one of 
the congregation has taken it to heart.” 

“ I am not sure of that,” returned the draper. “ Some 
talk among my own people has made me fancy that, 
perhaps, though talk be but froth, the froth may rise 
from some hot work down below. Never man could 
tell from the quiet way I am talking to you how much 
I have felt in these few days past.” 

Wingfold looked him in the face : the earnestness of 
the man was plain in his eyes, and his resolve stamped 
on every feature. The curate thought of Zacchaeus ; 
thought of Matthew at the receipt of custom ; thought 
with some shame of certain judgments concerning trade, 
and shopkeepers especially, that seemed somehow to 
have bred in him like creeping things ; for whence they 
had come he could not tell. 

Now it was clear as day that — always provided the 
man Christ Jesus can be and is with his disciples always 
to the end of the world — a tradesman might just as soon 
have Jesus behind the counter with him, teaching him 
to buy and sell in his naine, that is, as he would have 
done it as an earl riding over his lands might have him 
with him, teaching him how to treat his farmers and 
cottagers— all depending on how the one did his trading 
and the other his earling. A mere truism, is it } Yes, 
it is, and more is the pity ; for what is a truism, as most 
men count truisms } What is it but a truth that ought to 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


257 


have been buried long ago in the lives of men — to send 
up forever the corn of true deeds and the wine of lov- 
ing-kindness — but, instead of being buried in friendly 
soil, is allowed to lie about, kicked hither and thither 
in the dry and empty garret of their brains, till they are 
sick of the sight and sound of it, and, to be rid of the 
thought of it, declare it to be no living truth but only a 
lifeless truism ! Yet in their brain that truism must 
rattle until they shift it to its rightful quarters in their 
heart, where it will rattle no longer but take root and be 
a strength and loveliness. Is a truth to cease to be ut^ 
tered because no better form than that of some divine 
truism — say of St. John Boanerges — can be found for 
it ? To the critic the truism is a sea-worn, foot-trodden 
pebble ; to the obedient scholar, a radiant topaz, which» 
as he polishes it with the dust of its use, may turn into 
a diamond. 

“ Jesus buying and selling !’' said Wingfold to himself 
“ And why not ? Did Jesus make chairs and tables, or 
boats perhaps, which the people of Nazareth wanted, 
without any admixture of trade in the matter.? Was 
there no transaction .? No passing of money between 
hands ? Did they not pay his father for them } Was 
his Father’s way of keeping things going in the world 
too vile for the hands of him whose being was delight 
in the will of that Father? No ; there must be a way 
of handling money that is noble as the handling of the 
sword in the hands of the patriot. Neither the mean 
man who loves it nor the faithless man who despises 


258 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


it knows how to handle it. The former is one who al- 
lows his dog to become a nuisance, the latter one who 
kicks him from his sight. The noble man is he who so 
truly does the work given him to do that the inherent 
nobility of that work is manifest. And the trader who 
trades nobly is nobler surely than the high-born who, 
if he carried the principles of his daily life into trade, 
would be as pitiful a sneak as any he that bows and 
scrapes falsely behind that altar of lies, his counter.”^ 
All flat truisms I know, but no longer such to Wingfold, 
to whom they now for the first time showed themselves 
truths. 

He had taken a kindly leave of the draper, promising 
to call again soon, and had reached the room-door on 
his way out, when he turned suddenly and said, 

“Did you think to try praying, Mr. Drew.? Men 
whose minds, if I may venture to judge, seem to me, 
from their writings, of the very highest order, have 
really and positively believed that the loftiest activity 
of a man’s being lay in prayer to the unknown Fathet 
of that being, and that light in the inward parts was 
the certain consequence ; that, in very truth, not only 
did the prayer of the man find the ear of God, but the 
man himself found God himself. I have no right to an 
opinion, but I have a splendid hope that I shall one day 
find it true. The Lord said a man must go on praying 
and not lose heart.” 

With the words he walked out, and the deacon 
thought of his many prayers at prayer-meetings and fam- 


THE LINEN-DRAPER. 


259 


ily worships. The words of a young man who seemed 
to have only just discovered that there was such a 
thing as prayer, who could not pretend to be sure 
about it, but hoped splendidly, made him ashamed of 
them all. 


CHAPTER XL. 


RACHEL. 

INGFOLD went straight to his friend Pol- 
warth, and asked him if he would allow him 
to bring Mr. Drew some evening to tea. 

“ You mean the linen-draper ?” asked Pol- 
warth. “ Certainly, if you wish it.” 

“ Some troubles are catching,” said the curate. 
“ Drew has caught my disease.” 

“ I am delighted to hear it. It would be hard to catch 
a better, and it’s one a rich man, as they say he is, sel 
dom does catch. But I always liked his round, good- 
humored, honest face. If I remember rightly, he had 
a sore trial in his wife. It is generally understood that 
she ran away with some fellow or other. But that was 
before he came to live in Glaston. — Would you mind 
looking in upon Rachel for a few minutes, sir? She is 
not so well to-day, and has not been out of her own 
room.” 

“With all my heart,” answered Wingfold. “I am 
sorry to hear she is suffering.” 



RACHEL. 


261 


“ She is always suffering more or less,” said the little 
man. “ But she enjoys life, notwithstanding, as you 
may clearly see. It is to her only a mitigated good, and 
that, I trust, for the sake of an unmitigated one. — Come 
this way, sir.” 

He led the curate to the room next his own. 

It also was a humble little garret, but dainty with 
whiteness. One who did not thoroughly know her 
might have said it was like her life, colorless, but bright 
with innocence and peace. The walls were white ; the 
boards of the uncarpeted floor were as white as scrub- 
bing could make old deal ; the curtains of windows 
and bed were whiteness itself ; the coverlid was white ; 
so was the face that looked smiling over the top of it 
from the one low white pillow. But although Wingfold 
knew that face so well, he was almost startled at the 
sight of it now : in the patience of its suffering it was 
positively lovely. All that was painful to see was hid- 
den.; the crooked little body lay at rest in the grave of 
the bedclothes ; the soul rose from it, afid looked, gra- 
cious with womanhood, in the eyes of the curate. 

“ I can not give you my hand,” she said, smiling, as he 
went softly towards her, feeling like Moses when he put 
off his shoes, “ for I have such a pain in my arm, I can 
not well raise it.” 

The curate bowed reverentially, seated himself in a 
chair by her bedside, and, like a true comforter, said 
nothing. 

“ Don’t be sorry for me, Mr. Wingfold,” said her 
sweet voice at length. “ The poor dwarfie, as the chil- 


262 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


dren call me, is not a creature to be pitied. You don’t 
know how happy I am as I lie here, knowing my uncle 
is in the next room, and will come the moment I call 
him — and that there is one nearer still,” she added in a 
lower voice, almost in a whisper, “ whom I haven’t even 
to call. I am his, and he shall do with me just as he 
likes. I fancy sometimes, when ‘I have to lie still, that 
I am a little sheep, tied hands and feet — I should have 
said all four feet, if I am a sheep” — and here she gave a 
little merry laugh — “ lying on an altar — the bed here — 
burning away in the flame of life that consumes the 
deathful body — burning, heart and soul and sense, up to 
the great Father. — Forgive me, Mr. Wingfold, for talking 
about myself, but you looked so miserable ! and I knew 
it was your kind heart feeling for me. But I need not, 
for that, have gone on at such a rate. I am ashamed of 
myself !” 

“ On the contrary, I am exceedingly obliged to you 
for honoring me by talking so freely,” said Wingfold. 
“ It is a great sMisfaction to find that suffering is not 
necessarily unhappiness. I could be well content to 
suffer also. Miss Polwarth, if with the suffering I might 
have the same peace.” 

“ Sometimes I am troubled,” she answered ; “ but 
generally I am in peace, and sometimes too happy to dare 
speak about it. Would the persons you and my uncle 
were talking about the other day — would they say all 
my pleasant as well as my painful thoughts came from 
the same cause — vibrations in my brain ?” * 

“ No doubt. They would say, I presume, that the 


RACHEL. 


263 


pleasant thoughts come from regular, and the unpleasant 
from irregular, motions of its particles. They must 
give the same origin to both. Would you be willing 
to acknowledge that only your pleasant thoughts had 
a higher origin, and that your painful ones came from 
physical sources ?” 

Because of a headache and depression of spirits, 
Wingfold had been turning over similar questions in his 
own mind the night before. 

“ I see,” said the dwarfie, “ I see. No. There are sad 
thoughts sometimes which in their season I would not 
lose, for I would have their influences with me always. 
In their season they are better than a host of happy 
ones, and there is joy at the root of all. But if they did 
come from physical causes, would it follow that they 
did not come from God ? Is he not the God of the dying 
as well as the God of the living 

“ If there be a God, Miss Polwarth,” returned Wing- 
fold eagerly, “then is he God everywhere, and not a 
maggot can die any more than a Shakespeare be 
born without him. He is either enough, that is, all in 
all, or he is not at all.” 

“ That is what I think, because it is best. I can give 
’ no better reason.” 

“ If there be a God, there can be no better reason,” 
said Wingfold. 

This 2 / of Wingfold’s was, I need hardly now say, an 

of bare honesty, and came of no desire to shake an 
unthinking confidence. Neither, had it been of the 
other sort, could it have shaken Rachel’s, for her confi- 


264 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


dence was full of thinking. As little could it shock 
her, for she hardly missed a sentence that passed be- 
tween her uncle and his new friend. She made no re- 
ply, never imagining it her business to combat the 
doubts of a man whom she knew to be eager after the 
truth, and being guiltless of any tendency, because she 
believed, to condemn doubt as wicked. 

A short silence followed. 

“ How delightful it must be to feel well and strong !” 
said Rachel at length. “ I can’t help often thinking of 
Miss Lingard. It’s always Miss Lingard comes up to 
me when I think of such things ! Oh ! ain’t she beau- 
tiful and strong, Mr. Wingfold? — and sits on her horse 
as straight as a rush ! It does one good to see her. 
Just fancy me on a great tall horse ! What a bag of 
potatoes I should look !” 

She burst into a merry laugh, and then came a few 
tears, which were not all of the merriment of which she 
let them pass as the consequence, remarking, as she 
wiped them away, 

“ But no one can tell, Mr. Wingfold — and I’m sure 
Miss Lingard would be astonished to hear — what pleasure 
I have while lying unable to move. I suppose I benefit 
by what people call the law of compensation ! How I 
hate the word ! As if that was the way the Father of 
Jesus Christ did, and not his very best, to get his chil- 
dren, elder brothers and prodigal sons, home to his 
heart! — You heard what my uncle said about dreams 
the other day ?” she resumed after a little pause. 


RACHEL. 


265 


“Yes. I thought it very sensible,” replied the cu- 
rate. 

“ It all depends on the sort, don’t. it?” said Rachel. 
“ Some of mine I would not give for a library. They 
make me grow, telling me things I should never learn 
otherwise. I don’t mean any rubbish about future 
events, and such like. Of all useless things a know- 
ledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for 
what are you to do with a thing before it exists ? Such 
a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way 
to take — would make you see double instead of single. 
That’s not the sort I mean at all. You won’t laugh at 
me, Mr. Wingfold?” 

“ I can scarcely imagine any thing less likely.” 

“Then I don’t mind opening my toy-box to you. In 
my dreams, for instance, I am sometimes visited by 
such a sense of freedom as fills me with a pure bliss un- 
known to my waking thoughts except as a rosy cloud 
on the horizon. As if they were some heavenly corpo- 
ration, my dreams present me, not with the freedom cf 
some poor little»city like London, but with the freedoPi 
of all space.” 

The curate sat and listened with wonder, but with n^. 
sense of unfitness : such speech and such thought suit- 
ed well with the face that looked up from the low pil- 
low with its lovely eyes ; for lovely they were with a 
light that had both flash and force. 

“ I don’t believe,” she went on,“ that even Miss Lingard 
has more of the blessed sense of freedom and strength 
and motion when she is on horseback than I have when 


266 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


I am asleep. The ver)'- winds of my dreams will make 
me so unspeakably happy that I wake weeping. Do 
not tell me it is gone then, for I continue so happy that 
I can hardly get to sleep again to hunt for more joy. 
Don’t say it is an unreality — for where does freedom 
lie ? In the body or in the mind ? What does it matter 
whether my body be lying still or moving from one spot 
of space to another ? What is the good of motion but 
to produce the feeling of freedom ? The feeling is 
everything ; and if I have it, that is all that I want. Bodily 
motion would indeed disturb it for me — lay fetters on 
my spirit. — Sometimes, again, I dream of a new flower — 
one never before beheld by mortal eye — with some 
strange, wonderful quality in it, perhaps, that makes it 
a treasure, like that flower of Milton’s invention — hae- 
mony — in Comus, you know. But one curious thing is 
that that strange quality will never be recalled in waking 
hours ; so that what it was I can never tell — as if it be- 
longed to other regions than the life of this world — I 
retain only the vaguest memory of its power and mar- 
vel and preciousness. — Sometimes it i^a little poem or 
a song I dream of, or some strange musical instrument, 
perhaps like one of those I have seen angels with in a 
photograph from an old picture. And somehow with 
the instrument always comes the knowledge of how to 
play upon it. So you see, sir, as it has pleased God to 
send me into the world as crooked as a crab, and nearly 
as lame as a seal, it has pleased him also to give me the 
health and the riches of the night to strengthen me for 
the pains and poverties of the day.— You rejoice in a 


RACHEL. 


267 


beautiful thought when it comes to you, Mr. Wingfold, 
do you not.^” 

“When it comes to me,” answered Wingfold signifi- 
cantly, almost petulantly. Could it be that he envied 
the dwarf-girl ? 

“ Then is the thought any worse because it comes in a 
shape ? or is the feeling less of a feeling that it is born 
in a dream ?” 

“ I need no convincing. I admit all you say,” re- 
turned Wingfold. 

“ Why are you so silent, then ? You make me think 
you are objecting inside to everything I am saying,” 
rejoined Rachel with a smile. 

“ Partly because I fear you are exciting yourself too 
much and will suffer in consequence,” answered the cu- 
rate, who had noted the rosy flush on her face. 

The same moment her uncle re-entered the room. 

“ I have been trying to convince Mr. Wingfold that 
there 7nay be some good in dreaming, uncle,” she said. 

“ Successfully ?” asked Polwarth. 

“ Unnecessarily,” interjected Wingfold. “ I required 
for conviction only the facts. Why should I suppose 
that, if there be a God, he is driven out of us by sleep ?” 

“ It is an awful thing,” said Polwarth, “ to think that 
this feeble individuality of ours, the offspring of God s 
individuality, should have some power, and even more 
will than power, to close its door against him, and keep 
house v/ithout him !” 

“ But what sort of a house ?” murmured Wingfold. 

“Yes. uncle,” said Rachel ; “ but think how he keeps 


268 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


about US, haunting the doors and windows like the very 
wind, watching to get in ! And sometimes he makes of 
himself a tempest, that both doors and windows fly 
open, and he enters in fear and dismay.” 

The prophetic in the uncle was the poetic in the 
niece. 

“ For you and me, uncle,” she went on, “ he made 
the doors and windows so rickety that they could not 
keep him out.” 

“Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost,” said the cu- 
rate, almost unconsciously. 

“ Ain’t we funny temples !” rejoined the girl. 

So full was her soul of a lively devotion that she 
took the liberties of a child of the house with sacred 
things. 

“ But, Mr. Wingfold,” she continued, “ I must tell you 
one more curious thing about my dreams : I never 
dream of being crooked and dwarfish. I don’t dream 
that I am straight either ; I suppose I feel all right, and 
therefore never think about it. That makes me fancy 
my soul must be straight. Don’t you think so, sir Y' 

“ Indeed I do,” said Wingfold warmly. 

“ I am afraid I shall be telling you some of my dreams 
some day.” 

“We are rather given to that weakness,” said Pol- 
warth, “ so much so as to make me fear for our brains 
sometimes. But a crooked rose-tree may yet bear a 
good rose.” 

“ Ah ! you are thinking of my poor father, uncle, I 
know,” said Rachel. “ His was a straight stem and a fine 


RACHEL. 


269 


rose, only overblown, perhaps. I don’t think I need be 
much afraid of that, for if I were to go out of my mind, 
I should not have strength to live — except, indeed, I 
knew God through all the madness. I think my father 
did in a way.” 

“ It was quite plain he did,” answered her uncle, “ and 
that in no feeble way either. Some day I must tell 
you”— here he turned to Wingfold — “ about that bro- 
ther of mine, Rachel’s father. I should even like to 
show you a manuscript he left behind him — surely one 
of the strangest ever written ! It would be well worth 
printing if that would insure its falling into the hands 
of those who could read through the madness. — But we 
have talked quite long enough for your head, child : I 
will take Mr. Wingfold into the next room.” 


CHAPTER XLl. 


THE BUTTERFLY. 

S Wingfold walked home that afternoon, he 
thought much of what he had heard and 
seen. “ If there be a God,” he said to him- 
self, “ then all is well, for certainly he would 
not give being to such a woman, and then throw her 
aside as a failure and forget her. It is strange to see, 
though, how he permits his work to be thwarted. To 
be the perfect God notwithstanding, he must be able to 
turn the very thwarting to higher furtherance. Don’t 
we see something of the sort in life — the vigorous nursed 
by the arduous ? Is it presumptuous to imagine God 
saying to Rachel, ‘Trust me and bear, and I will do 
better for thee than thou canst think ’ ? Certainly 
the one who most needs the comfort of such a 
faith, in this case has it. I wish I could be as sure of 
him as Rachel Polwarth ! But then,” he added, smiling 
to himself, “ she has had her crooked spine to help her ! 
It seems as if nothing less than the spiritual behold- 



THE BUTTERFLY. 


271 


ing of the Eternal will enable at least absolute belief. 
And till then what better or indeed other proof can the 
less receive of the presence of the greater than the ex- 
pansion of its own being under the influences of that 
greater ? But rny plague now is that the ideas of reli- 
gion are so grand, and the things all around it in life so 
commonplace, that they give the lie to each other from 
morning to night — in my mind, I mean. Which is the 
true ; a loving, caring father, or the grinding of cruel 
poverty and the naked exposure to heedless chance ? 
How is it that, while the former seems the only right 
reasonable, and all-sufficing thing, it should yet come 
more naturally to believe in the latter ? And yet, when 
I think of it, I never did come closer to believing in the 
matter than is indicated by terror of its possible truth — ^ 
so many things looked like it. Then what has nature in 
common with the Bible and its metaphysics ? — There I 
am wrong : she has a thousand things. The very wind 
on my face seems to rouse me to fresh effortafter a pure, 
healthy life ! Then there is the sunrise ! There is the 
snowdrop in the snow ! There is the butter fly ! There is 
the rain of summer, and the clearing of the sky after a 
storm ! There is the hen gathering her chickens under 
her wing ! I begin to doubt whether there be the com- 
monplace anywhere except in our own mistrusting na- 
ture, that will cast no care upon the Unseen. It is with 
me in regard to my better life as it was with the disci- 
ples in regard to their bodily life, when they were for 
the time rendered incapable of understanding the words 
of our Lord by having forgotten to take bread in the 


272 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


boat : they were so afraid of being hungry that they could 
think of nothing but bread.” 

Such were some of the curate’s thoughts as he walked 
home, and they drove him to prayer, in which came more 
thoughts. When he reached his room he sat down at his 
table, and wove and knotted and pieced together the fol- 
lowing verses, venturing that easy yet perilous thing, a 
sonnet. I give here its final shape, not its first or second : 

Methought I floated sightless, nor did know 
That I had ears until I heard the cry 
As of a mighty man in agony : 

“ How long. Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? 

The arrows of thy lightning through me go. 

And sting and torture me — yet here I lie 
A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh.” 

The darkness thinned ; I saw a thing below. 

Like sheeted corpse, a knot at head and feet. 

Slow clomb the sun the mountains of the dead, 

And looked upon the world : the silence broke ! 

A blinding struggle ! then the thunderous beat 
Of great exulting pinions stroke on stroke ! 

And from that world a mighty angel fled. 

But upon the heels of the sonnet came, as was natu- 
ral, according to the law of reaction, a fresh and more 
appalling, because more self-assertive and verisimilous, 
invasion of the commonplace. What a foolish, unreal 
thing he had written ! He caught up his hat and stick 
and hurried out, thinking to combat the demon better 
in the open air. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


THE COMMONPLACE. 

T was evening, and the air was still and warm. 
Pine street was almost empty save of the 
red sun, which blinded him so that wherever 
he looked he could only see great sun-blots. 
All but a few of the shops were closed, but among the 
few he was surprised to find that of his friend the linen- 
draper, who had always been a strong advocate of early 
closing. The shutters were up, however, though the 
door stood wide open. He peeped in. To his sun-blind- 
ed eyes the shop looked very dark, but he thought he 
saw Mr. Drew talking to some one, and entered. He 
was right: it was the draper himself and a poor woman 
with a child on one arm, and a print dress she had just 
bought on the other. The curate leaned against the 
counter, and waited until business should be over to ad- 
dress his friend. 

“ Is Mr. Drew an embryonic angel ?” he half felt, half 
thought witH himself. “ Is this shop the chrysalis of a 
great psyche? Will the draper, with his round, good- 



274 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


humored face and puckering smile, ever spread thunder- 
ous wings and cleave the air up to the throne of God ?” 

“ I can not tell you how it goes against me to take that 
woman's money,” said the voice of the draper. 

The curate woke up to the presence of the unwinged, 
and saw that the woman had left the shop. 

“ I did let her have the print at cost price,’’ Mr. Drew 
went on, laughing merrily. “ That was all I could ven- 
ture on.” 

“ Where was the danger 

“ Ah, you don’t know so well as I do the good of hav- 
ing some difficulty in getting what you need ! To ease 
the struggles of the poor, except it be in sickness or ab- 
solute want, I have repeatedly proved to be a cruel 
kindness.” 

“ Then you don’t sell to the poor women at cost price 
always ?” 

“ No ; only to the soldiers’ wives. They have a very 
hard life of it, poor things.” 

“ That is your custom, then ?” 

“ For the last ten years. But I don’t let them know 
it.” 

“ Is it for the soldiers’ wives you keep your shop open 
so late ? I thought you were the great supporter of ear- 
ly closing in Glaston,” said the curate. 

“ I will tell you how it happened to-night,” answered 
the draper, and as he spoke he turned round, not his 
long left ear upon the pivot of his skull, but his whole 
person upon the pivot of the counter — to misuse the 


THE COMMONPLACE. 


275 


word pivot with Wordsworth — and bolted the shop- 
door. 

" After the young men had put up the shutters and 
were gone,” he said, returning to the counter, “ leaving 
me as usual to bolt the door, I fell a-thinking. Outside, 
the street was full of sunlight, but only enough came in 
to show how gloomy the place was without more of it, 
and the back of the shop was nearly dark. It was very 
still, too — so still that the silence seemed to have taken 
the shape of gloom. Pardon me for talking in this un- 
business-like way : a man can’t be a draper always ; he 
must be foolish sometimes. Thirty years ago I used to 
read Tennyson. I believe I was among the earliest of 
his admirers. 

“ Foolish !” echoed Wingfold, thoughtfully. 

“ You see,” the draper went on, “ there is something 
solemn in the quiet after business is over. Sometimes 
it’s more so, sometimes less ; but this night it came upon 
me that the shop felt like a chapel — had the very air 
of one, somehow, and so I fell ;a-thinking, and forgot to 
shut the door. How I began I don’t know, but my past 
life came up to me, and I remembered how, when I was 
a young man, I used to despise my father’s business to 
which he was bringing me up, and feed my fancy with 
things belonging to higher walks in life. Then I saw 
that must have been partly how I fell into the mistake 
of marrying Mrs. Drew. She was the daughter of a 
doctor in our town, a widower. He was in poor health, 
and unable to make much of his practice, so that 
when he died she was left destitute, and for that reason 


276 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CITRATE. 


alone, I do believe, accepted me. What followed you 
know ; she went away'with a man who used to travel 
for a large Manchester house. I have never heard of her 
since. 

“ After she left me, a sort of something which I think 
I may call the disease of self-preservation laid hold 
upon me. I must acknowledge that the loss of my wife 
was not altogether a misery. She despised my trade, 
which drove me to defend it — and the more bitterly that 
I also despised it. There was, therefore, a good deal of 
strife between us. I did not make allowance enough 
for the descent she had made from a professional father 
to a trader-husband. I forgot that, if she was to blame 
for marrying me for bread, I was to blame' for marrying 
her to enlarge myself with her superiority. After she 
was gone I was aware of a not unwelcome calm in the 
house, and in the emptiness of that calm came the demon 
of selfishness sevenfold into my heart, and took up his 
abode with me. From that time I busied myself only 
about two things — the safety of my soul and a good 
provision for my body. I joined the church I had occa- 
sion to mention to you before, sir, grew a little harder 
in my business dealings, and began to lay by money. 
And so, ever since, have I been going on till I heard 
your sermon the other day, which I hope has waked me 
up to something better. All this long story is but to let 
you understand how I was feeling when that woman 
came into the shop. I told you how, in the dusk and the 
silence, it was as if I were in the chapel. I found myself 
half listening for the organ. Then the verse of a hymn 


THE COMMONPLACE. 


277 


came into my mind — I can’t tell where or when I had 
met with it, but it had stuck to me : 

“ ‘ Let me stand ever at the door, 

And keep it from the entering sin. 

That so thy temple, walls and floor, 

Be pure for thee to enter in.’ 

Now that, you see, is said of the temple of the heart ; 
but somehow things went rather cross-cut this evening 
—they got muddled in my head. It seemed as if I was 
the door-keeper of my shop, and at the same time as if 
my shop, spreading out and dimly vanishing in the sa- 
cred gloom, was the temple of the Holy Ghost, out of 
which I had to keep the sin. And with the thought a 
great awe fell upon me : could it be — might it not be that 
God was actually in the place ? that in the silence he 
was thinking — in the gloom he was knowing ? I laid 
myself over the counter, with my face in my hands, and 
went on half thinking, half praying. All at once the 
desire rose burning in my heart, Would to God my 
house were in truth a holy place, haunted by his pres- 
ence ! ‘And wherefore not } ’ rejoiced something with- 
in me — heart or brain or something deeper than either. 
‘ Is thy work unholy ? Are thy deeds base ? Is thy 
buying or selling dishonest } Is it all for thyself and no- 
thing for thy fellows } Is it not a lawful calling ? Is it 
or is it not of God ? If it be of God, and yet he be not 
present, then surely thy lawful calling thou followest 
unlawfully !’ So there I was — brought back to the old 
story. And I said to myself, ‘ God knows I want to fol- 


278 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


low it lawfully. Am I not even now seeking how to do 
so }' But this, though true, did not satisfy me. To fol- 
low it lawfully — even in his sight — no longer seemed 
enough. Was there then no possibility of raising it to 
dignity.^ Did the business of Zaccheus remain, after 
the visit of Jesus, a contemptible one still } Could not 
mine be made Christian } Was there no corner in the 
temple where a man might buy and sell and not be 
driven out by the whip of small cords ? I heard a step in 
the shop, and lifting my head, saw a poor woman with 
a child in her arms. Annoyed at being found in that 
posture, like one drunk or in despair ; annoyed also with 
myself for not having shut the door, with my usual first 
tendency to injustice a harsh word was trembling on my 
very lips, w^hen suddenly something made me look 
round in a kind of maze on the dusky back-shop. A 
moment more and I understood ; God w'as waiting to see 
what truth was in my w^ords. That is just how I felt it, 
and I hope I am not irreverent in saying so. Then I 
saw that the poor woman looked frightened — I suppose 
at my looks and gestures ; perhaps she thought me out 
of my mind. I made haste and received her, and listen- 
ed to her errand as if she had been a duchess — Say rath- 
er an angel of God, for such 1 felt her in my heart to 
be.f She wanted a bit of dark print with a particular 
kind of spot in it, which she had seen in the shop some 
months before but had not been able to buy. I turned 
over every thing we had, and was nearly in despair. At 
last, however, I found the very piece which had ever 
since haunted her fancy — just enough of it left for a 


THE COMMONPLACE. 


279 


dress ! But all the time I sought it I felt as if I were 
doing God service — or at least doing something he 
wanted me to do. It sounds almost ludicrous now, 
but—” 

“ God forbid !” said Wingfold. 

“ I’m glad you don’t think so, sir. I was afraid you 
would.” 

“ Had the thing been a trifle, I should still have said 
the same,” returned the curate. “ But who with any 
heart would call it a trifle to please the fancy of a poor 
woman, one who is probably far oftener vexed than 
pleased? ‘ She had been brooding over this dress ; you 
took trouble to content her with her desire. Who 
knows what it may do for the growth of the woman 
I know what you’ve done for me by the story of it !” 

“ She did walk out pleased-like !” said the draper, 
“ and left me more pleased than she — and so grateful to 
her for coming, you can’t think !” 

“ I begin to suspect,” said the curate, after a pause, 
“ that the common transactions of life are the most sa- 
cred channels for the spread of the heavenly leaven. 
There was ten times more of the divine in selling her 
that gown as you did, in the name of God, than in tak- 
ing her into your pew and singing out of the same 
hymn-book with her.” 

“ I should be glad to do that next, though, if I had the 
/:hance,” said Mr. Drew. “ You must not think, because 
he has done me so little good, that our minister is not a 
faithful preacher ; and, owing you more than heart can 
tell, sir, I like chapel better than church, and consider it 


28 o 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


nearer the right way. I don’t mean to be a turncoat 
and leave Drake for you, sir. I must give up my dea- 
conship, but I won’t my pew or my subscription.” 

“ Quite right, Mr. Drew !” said Wingfold. “ That 
could do nothing but harm. I have just been reading 
what our Lord says about proselytizing. Good night.” 


CHAPTER XLIII. 


HOME AGAIN. 

HE curate had entered the draper’s shop in 
the full blaze of sunset, but the demon of 
unbelief sat on his shoulders : he could get 
no nearer his heart, but that was enough to 
make of the “ majestical roof fretted with golden fire 
.... a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” 
When he left the shop, the sun was far below the hori- 
zon, and the glory had faded out of the west ; but the 
demon had fled, and the brown feathers of the twilight 
were beautiful as the wings of the silver dove sprung 
heavenwards from among the pots. And as he went he 
reasoned with himself : “ Either there is a God, and that 
God the perfect heart of truth and loveliness, or all poe- 
try and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower 
crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. The 
man who sees no beauty in its petals, finds no perfume 
in its breath, may well accord it the parentage of the 
stones ; the man whose heart swells beholding it, will 
be ready to think it has roots that reach below them.” 



282 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


The curate’s search, it will be remarked, had already 
widened greatly the sphere of his doubts ; but the lar- 
ger the field the greater the chance of finding a marl-pit ; 
and if there be such a thing as truth, every fresh doubt 
is yet another finger-post pointing towards its dwelling. 
So talked the curate to himself, and, full in the face, 
rounding the corner of a street, met George Bascombe. 

The young barrister held out his large hospitable hand 
at the full length of nis arm, and spread abroad his wide 
chest to greet him, and they went through the ceremo- 
ny of shaking hands — which., even in their case, I can not 
judge so degrading and hypocritical as the Latin nations 
seem to consider it. Then Wingfold had the first word. 

“ I have not yet had an opportunity of thanking you 
for the great service you have done me,” he said. 

“ I am glad to know I have such an honor ; but — ” 

“ I mean in opening my eyes to my true position.” 

“ Ah, my dear fellow ! I was sure you only required 
to have your attention turned in the right direction. 
When— ah !— I— I was on the verge of committing the 
solecism of asking when you thought of resigning ! 
Ha ! ha !” * 

“ Not yet,” replied Wingfold to the question thus at 
once withdrawn and put. “The more I look into the 
matter, the more reason I find for hoping it may be 
possible for me to — to keep the appointment.” 

“ Oh !” 

“ The further I inquire, the more am I convinced that 
if not in a certain portion of what the church teaches, 
then nowhere else, and assuredly not in what you teach, 


HOME AGAIN. 


283 


shall I find any thing by which life can either account 
for or justify itself.” 

“ But if what you find is not true !” cried George, with 
a burst of senii-grand indignation. 

“ But if what I find should be true, even though you 
should never be able to see it !” returned the curate. 

And as if disjected by an explosion between them, the 
two men were ten paces asunder, each hurrying his own 
way. 

“ If I can’t prove there is a God,” said Wingfold to 
himself, “ as little surely can he prove there. is none !” 

But then came the thought, “ The fellow will say 
that, there being no sign of a God, the burden of proof 
lies with me.” 

And therewith he saw how useless it would be to dis- 
cuss the question with any one who, not seeing him, had 
no desire to see him. 

“ No !” he said, “ my business is not to prove to any 
other man that there is a God, but to find him for my- 
self. If I should find him, then will be time enough to 
think of showing him.” 

And with that his thoughts turned from Bascombe and 
went back to the draper. When he reached home he 
took out his sonnet, but after working at it for a little 
while, he found that he must ease his heart by writing 
another. Here it is : 

Methought that in a solemn church I stood. 

Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet, 

Lay spread from door to door, from street to street. 

Midway the form hung high upon the road 


284 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Of Him who gave his life to be our good ; 

Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet 
Among the candles shining still and sweet. 

Men came and went, and worshipped as they could. 

And still their dust a woman with her broom, 

Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door. 

Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom. 

Across the church a silent figure come ; 

“ Daughter,” it said, “ thou sweepest well my floor !” 

It is the Lord, I cried, and saw no more. 

I suppose if one could so stop the throat of the blossom- 
buried nightingale that, though he might breathe at 
will, he could no longer sing, he would drop from his 
bough, and die of suppressed song. Perhaps some men 
so die ; I do not know : it were better than to live and 
bore their friends with the insuppressible ! But how- 
ever this may be, the man who can utter himself to his 
own joy in any of the forms of human expression, let 
him give thanks to God ; and if he give not his verses 
to the printer, he will probably have cause to give 
thanks again. To the man’s self the utterance is, not 
the less, invaluable. And so Wingfold found it. 

He went out again and into the churchyard, where 
he sat down on a stone. 

“ How strange,” he said to himself, “ that out of faith 
should have sprung that stone church. A poor lit- 
tle poem nowand then is all that stands for mine !— all 
that shows, that is. But my heart does sometimes burn 
within me ! If only I could be sure they were words 
that set it burning !” 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


THE SHEATH. 

R WINGFOLD, " said Polwarth one evening, 
the usual salutations over, taking what he 
commonly left to his friend— the initiative,— 
“ I want to tell you something I don’t wish 
even Rachel to hear.” 

He led the way to his room, and the curate followed. 
Seated there, in the shadowy old attic, through the very 
walls of which the ivy grew, and into which, by the open 
window in the gable, from the infinite west blew the 
evening air, carrying with it the precious scent of honey- 
suckle to mingle with that of old books, Polwarth re- 
counted and Wingfold listened to a strange adventure. 
The trees hid the sky, and the little human nest was 
dark around them. 

“lam going to make a confidant of you, Mr. Wing- 
fold,” said the dwarf, with troubled face and almost 
whispered word. “You will know how much I have 
already learned to trust you when I say that what I am 
about to confide to you plainly involves the secret o'" 
another.” 



286 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


His large face grew paler as he spoke, and something 
almost like fear grew in his eyes, but they looked straight 
into those of the curate, and his voice did not tremble. 

“ One night, some weeks ago — I can, if necessary, 
make myself certain of the date, — I was — no uncommon 
thing with me — unable to sleep. Sometimes, when such 
is my case, I lie as still and liaopy as any bird under the 
wing of its mother ; at other times i must get up and 
go out : for I take longings for air almost as a drunkard 
for wine, and that night nothing would serve my poor 
imprisoned soul but more air through the bars of its 
lungs. I rose, dressed, and went out. 

“ It was a still, warm night, no moon, but plenty of 
star-light, the wind blowing as now, gentle and sweet 
and cool — just the wind my lungs sighed for. I got into 
the open park, avoiding the trees, and wandered on and 
on, without thinking where I was going. The turf was 
soft under my feet, the dusk soft to my eyes, and the 
wind to my soul ; I had breath and room and leisure and 
silence and loneliness, and everything to make me more 
than usually happy ; and so I wandered on and on, nei- 
ther caring nor looking whither I went i so long as 
^ the stars remained unclouded I could find my way back 
when I pleased. 

“ I had been out perhaps an hour, when through the 
soft air came a cry, apparently from far off. There was 
something in the tone that seemed to me unusually 
frightful. The bare sound made me shudder before 1 
had time to say to myself it was a cry. i turned my face 
in the direction of it, so far as I could judge, and w^ent 


THE SHEATH. 


287 


on. I can not run, for if I attempt it I am in a mo- 
ment unable even to walk — from palpitation and chok- 
ing. 

“ I had not gone very far before I found myself ap- 
proaching the hollow where stands the old house of 
Glaston, uninhabited for twenty years. Was it possible, 
I thought, that the cry came from the house, and had, 
therefore, sounded farther off than it was ? I stood and 
listened^for a moment, but all seemed still as the grave. 
I must go in, and see whether any one was there in want 
of help. You may well smile at the idea of my helping 
any one, for what could I do if it came to a struggle ?'" 

“ On the contrary,” interrupted Wingfold, “ I was 
smiling with admiration of your pluck.” 

“At least,” resumed Polwarth, “I have this advan- 
tage over some, that I cannot be fooled with the fancy 
that this poor miserable body of mine is worth thinking 
of beside the smallest suspicion of duty. What is it but 
a cracked jug ? So down the slope I went, got into the 
garden, and made my way through the tangled bushes 
to the house. I knew the place perfectly, for I had 
often wandered all over it, sometimes spending hours 
there. 

“ Before I reached the door, however, I heard some 
one behind me in the garden, and instantly stepped into 
a thicket of gooseberry and currant bushes. It is some- 
times an advantage to be little : the moment I stepped 
aside I was hidden. That same moment the night seem' 
ed rent in twain by a most hideous cry from the house. 
Ere I could breathe again after it, the tall figure of a wo- 


288 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Tian rushed past me, tearing its way through the bushes 
towards the door. I followed instantly, saw her run up 
the steps, and heard her open and shut the door. I 
opened it as quietly as I could, but just as I stepped into 
the dark hall came a third fearful cry, through the 
echoes of which in the empty house I heard the rush of 
hurried feet and trailing garments on the stair. As I say, 
I knew the house quite well, but my perturbation had so 
muddled the idea of it in my brain, that for a^few sec- 
onds I had to consider how it lay. The moment I re- 
called its plan, I made what haste I could, reached the 
top of the stair, and was hesitating which way to turn, 
when once more came the fearful cry, and set me trem- 
bling from head to foot. I can not describe the horror 
of it. It was as the cry of a soul in torture — unlike any 
sound of the human voice I had ever before heard. I 
shudder now at the recollection- of it as it echoed 
through the house, clinging to the walls and driven 
along. I was hurrying I knew not whither, for I had 
again lost all notion of the house, when I caught a 
glimpse of a light shining from under a door. I ap- 
proached it softly, and finding that door inside a small 
closet, knew at once where I was. As I was in office on 
the ground, and it could hardly be anything righteous 
that led to such an outcry in the house which, although 
deserted, was still my master’s, I felt justified in 
searching further into the matter. Laying my ear, there- 
fore, against the door, I heard what was plainly enough 
a lady’s voice. Right sweet and womanly it was, though 
full of pain — even agony, I thought, but heroically sup- 


THE SHEATH. 


289 


pressed. She soothed, she expostulated, she condoled, 
she coaxed. Mingled with hers was the voice of youth, 
as it seemed. It was wild, yet so low as sometimes to 
be all but inaudible, and not a word from either could I 
distinguish. Hardly the less plain was it, however, that 
the youth spoke either in delirium or with something 
terrible on his mind, for his tones were those of one in 
despair. I stood for a time bewildered, fascinated, ter- 
rified. At length I grew convinced somehow that I had 
no right to be there. Doubtless the man was in hiding, 
and where a man hides there must be reason ; but was it 
any business of mine ? I crept out of the house, and up 
to the higher ground. There I drew deep breaths of 
the sweet night air — so pure that it seemed to be washing 
the world clean for another day’s uses. But I had no 
longer any pleasure in the world. I went straight home, 
and to bed again — but had brought little repose with me : 
I must do something, but what The only result cer- 
tain to follow was more trouble to the troubled already. 
Might there not be innocent reasons for the question- 
able situation ? Might not the man have been taken ill, 
and so suddenly that he could reach no other shelter? 
And the lady might be his wife, who had gone as soon 
as she could leave him to find help, but had failed. 
There must be some simple explanation of the matter, 
however strange it ''howed ! I might, in the morning, 
be of service to them. And partly comforted by- the 
temporary conclusion, I got a little troubled sleep. 

“ As soon as I had had a cup of tea, I set out for the old 
house. I heard the sounds of the workmen’s hammers 


290 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


on the new one as I went. All else was silence. The day 
looked so honest and so clear of conscience that it was 
difficult to believe the night had shrouded such an aw- 
ful meeting. Yet, in the broad light of the forenoon, a 
cold shudder seized me when first I looked down on the 
slack ridges and broken roofs of the old house. When 
I got into the garden I began to sing and knock the 
bushes about, then opened the door noisily, and clat- 
tered about in the hall and the lower rooms before go- 
ing up the stair. Along every passage and into every 
room I went, to give good warning ere 1 approached 
that in which I had heard the voices. At length I stood 
at the door of it and knocked. There was no answer. 
I knocked again. Still no answer. I opened it and 
peeped in. There was no one there ! An old bedstead 
was all I saw. I searched every corner, but not one 
trace could I discover of human being having been’ 
there, except this behind the bed— and it may have lain 
there as long as the mattress, which I remember since 
the first time I ever went into the house.” 

As he spoke, Polwarth handed to the curate a small 
leather sheath, which, from its shape, could not have 
belonged to a pair of scissors, although neither of the 
men knew any sort of knife it would have fitted. 

“ Would you mind taking care of it, Mr. Wingfold ?” 
the gate-keeper continued as the curate examined it ; 
“ I don’t like having it. I can’t even bear to think of it 
in the house, and yet I don’t quite care to destroy it.” 

“I don’t in the least mind taking charge of it,” an- 
swered Wingfold. 


THE SHEATH. 


291 


Why was it that, as he said so, the face of Helen Lin- 
gard rose before his mind’s eye as he had now seen it 
twice in the congregation at the Abbey — pale with an 
inward trouble, as it seemed, large-eyed and worn — so 
changed, yet so ennobled ? Even then he had felt the 
deadening effect of its listlessness, and had had to turn 
away lest it should compel him to feel that he was but 
talking to the winds, or into a desert where dwelt no 
voice of human response. Why should he think of her 
now ? Was it that her troubled, pallid face had touched 
him — had set something near his heart a-trembling, 
whether with merely human sympathy or with the ten- 
derness of man for suffering woman ? Certainly he had 
never till then thought of her with the slightest inter- 
est, and why should she come up to him now ? Could 
it be that — Good heaven ! There was her brother 
ill ! And had not Faber said there seemed something 
unusual about the character of his illness ? What could 
it mean ? It was impossible, of course — but yet — and 
yet — . 

“ Do you think,” he said, “ we are in any way bound 
to inquire further into the affair ?” 

“ If I had thought so, I should not have left it unmen- 
tioned till now,” answered Polwarth. “ But without be- 
ing busybodies, we might be 'prepared in case the thing 
should unfold itself, and put it in our power to be useful. 
Meantime I have the relief of the confessional.” 


CHAPTER XLV. 


INVITATION. 

S Wingfold walked back to his lodgings, he 
found a new element mingling with the va- 
ried matter of his previous inquiry. Human 
suffering laid hold upon him — neither as his 
own nor as that of humanity, but as that of men and 
women — known or unknown, it mattered nothing ; there 
were hearts in the world from whose agony broke terri- 
ble cries, hearts of which sad faces like that of Miss 
Lingard were the exponents. Such hearts might be 
groaning and writhing in any of the houses he passed, 
and, even if he knew the hearts, and what the vampire 
that sucked their blood, he could do nothing for their 
relief. Little indeed could he have imagined the life of 
such a comfort-guarded la'dy as Miss Lingard, exposed 
to the intrusion of any terror-waking monster, from the 
old ocean of chaos into the quiet flow of its meadow- 
banked river ! And what multitudes must there not be 
in the world — what multitudes in our island ; how many 
even in Glaston, whose hearts, lacerated by no remorse, 



INVITATION. 


293 


overwhelmed by no crushing sense of guilt, yet knew 
their own bitterness, and had no friend radiant enough 
to make a sun-shine in their shady places ! He fell into 
mournful mood over the troubles of his race. Al- 
ways a kind-hearted fellow, he had not been used to 
think about such things ; he had had troubles of his 
own, and had got through at least some of them ; peo- 
ple must have troubles, else would they grow unendu- 
rable for pride and insolence. But now that he had be- 
gun to hope he saw a glimmer somewhere afar at the 
end of the darksome cave in which he had all at once 
discovered that he was buried alive, he began also to 
feel how wretched those must be who were groping on 
without even a hope in their dark eyes. 

If he had never committed any crime, he bad yet 
done wrong enough to understand the misery of shame 
and dishonor, and should he not find a loving human 
heart the heart of the world, would rejoice — with 
what rejoicing might then be possible to accept 
George Bascombe’s theory, and drop into the jaws of 
darkness and cease. How much more miserable, then, 
must those be who had committed some terrible crime, 
or dearly loved one, who had ! What relief, what hope, 
what lightening for them ! What a breeding-nest of ver- 
miculate cares and pains was this human heart of ours ! 
Oh! surely it needed some refuge ! If no saviour had 
yet come, the tortured world of human hearts cried 
aloud for one with unutterable groaning ! What would 
Bascombe do if he had committed a murder ? Or what 
could he do for one who had ? If fable it were, it was 


294 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE 


at least a need-invented one — that of a Saviour to whom 
any one might go, at any moment, without a journey, 
without letters or commendations or credentials ! And 
yet no : if it had be*en invented, it could hardly be by 
any one in the need, for such even now could hardly bj 
brought to believe it. Ill-bested were the world indeed 
if there were no one beyond whose pardon crime could 
not go ! Ah! but where was the good of pardon if still 
the conscious crime kept stinging } and who would wish 
one he loved to grow callous to the crime he had com- 
mitted ? Could one rejoice that his guilty friend had 
learned to laugh again, able at length to banish the me- 
mory of the foul thing? Would reviving self-content 
render him pleasant to the eyes, and his company pre- 
cious in the wisdom that springs from the knowledge of 
evil ? Would not that be the moment when he who had 
most assiduously sought to comfort him in his remorse, 
would first be tempted to withdraw his foot from his 
threshold ? But if there was a God — such a God as, ac- 
cording to the Christian story, had sent his own son in- 
to the world: had given him to appear among us, cloth- 
ed in the garb of humanity, the armor that can be pier- 
ced, to take all the consequences of being the god of 
obedience among the children of disobedience, engulf- 
ing their wrongs in his infinite forbearance, and winning 
them back, by slow and unpromising and tedious renew- 
al, to the heart of his father, surely such a God would not 
have created them knowing that some of them would 
sin sins from the horror of which in themselves all his 
devotion could not redeem them ' And as he thought 


INVITATION, 


295 


thus, the words arose in his mind, Come unto me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ 
His heart filled. He pondered over them. When he 
got home, he sought and found them in the book. Did 
a man ever really utter them ? If a man did, either he 
was the most presumptuous of mortals, or he could do 
what he said. If he could, then to have seen and dis- 
trusted that man. Wingfold felt, would have been to de- 
stroy in himself the believing faculty and become inca- 
pable of trusting forever after. And such aman*must, in 
virtue of his very innocence, know that the worst weari- 
ness and the worst load is evil and crime, and must 
know himself able, in full righteousness, with no jugglery 
of oblivion or self-esteem, to take off the heavy load 
and give rest. 

“ And yet,” thought the curate, not without self-re- 
proach, “ for one who will go to him to get the rest, a 
thousand will ask. How can he then do iti As if they 
should be fit to know !” 


CHAPTER XLVI. 


A SERMON TO HELEN. 

LL the rest of the week his mind was full of 
thoughts like these, amidst which ever arose 
the suffering face of Helen Lingard, bringing 
with it the still strengthening suspicion that 
behind it must lay some oppressive, perhaps terri- 
ble, secret: But he made no slightest movement to- 
wards the discovery of it, put not a single question in 
any direction for its confirmation or dissolution. He 
would not look in at her windows, but what seeds of 
comfort he could find, he would scatter wide, and hope 
that some of them might fall into her garden. 

When he raised his head on the Sunday from kneeling^ 
with heart honest, devout, and neighborly, in the pulpit 
before the sermon, and cast his eyes round his congrega- 
tion, they rested first, for one moment and no more, up- 
on the same pallid and troubled countenance whose re- 
flection had so often of late looked out from the magic 
mirror of his memory ; the next, they fliUed across the 
satisfied, healthy, handsome, clever face of her cousin, 



A SERMON TO HELEN. 


297 


behind which plainly sat a conscience well-to-do, in an 
easy-chair ; the third, they saw and fled the peevish au- 
tumnal visage of Mrs. Ramshorn ; the next, they roved a 
little, then rested on the draper’s good-humored disk, 
on the white forehead of which brooded a cloud of 
thoughtfulness. Last of all they sought the free seats, 
and found the faces of both the dwarfs. It was the first 
time he had seen Rachel’s there, and it struck him that 
it expressed greater suffering than he had read in it be- 
fore. She ought rather to be in bed than in church, he 
thought. But the same seemed the case with her uncle’s 
countenance also ; and with that came the conclusion 
that the pulpit was a wonderful watch-tower whence to 
study human nature ; that people lay bare more of their 
real nature and condition to the man in the pulpit than 
they know — even before the sermon. Their faces had 
fallen into the shape of their minds, for the church has 
an isolating as well as congregating power, and no pass- 
ing emotion moulds them to an evanescent show. When 
Polwarth spoke to a friend, the suffering melted in issu- 
ing radiance ; when he sat thus quiescent, patient endu- 
rance was the first thing to be read on his counte- 
nance. This flashed through the curate’s mind in the 
moments ere he began to speak, and with it came afresh 
.the feeling — one that is yet ought not to be sad — that 
no one of all these hearts could give summer weather 
to another. The tears rose in his eyes as he gazed, and 
his heart swelled towards his own flesh and blood, as if 
his spirit would break forth in a torrent of ministering 
tenderness and comfort. Then he made haste to speak 


298 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


lest he should become unable. As usual his voice trem- 
bled at first, but rose into strength as his earnestness 
found way. This is a good deal like what he said : 

“The marvellous man who is reported to have ap- 
peared in Palestine, teaching and preaching, seems to 
have suffered far more from sympathy with the inward 
sorrows of his race than from pity for their bodily pains'. 
These last could he not have swept from the earth with 
a word } and yet it seems to have been mostly, if not 
indeed always, only in answer to prayer that he healed 
them, and that for the sake of some deeper, some spiri- 
tual healing that should go with the bodily cure. It 
could not be for the dead man whom he was about to 
call from the tomb that his tears flowed. What source 
could they have but compassion and pitiful sympathy 
for the sorrows of the dead man’s sisters and friends 
who had not the inward joy that sustained himself, and 
the thought of all the pains and heartaches of those that 
looked in the face of death — the moanings of love-torn 
generations, the blackness of bereavement that had 
stormed through the ever-changing world of human 
hearts since first man had been made in the image of his 
Father ? Yet are there far more terrible troubles than 
this death — which I trust can only part, not keep apart. 
There is the weight of conscious wrong-being and 
wrong-doing : that is the gravestone that needs to be 
rolled away ere a man can rise to life. Call to mind how 
Jesus used to forgive men’s sins, thus lifting from their 
hearts the crushing load that paralyzed all their efforts. 
Recall the tenderness with which he received those from 


A SERMON TO HELEN. 


299 


whom the religious of his day turned aside — the repen- 
tant women who wept sore-hearted from very love, the 
publicans who knew they were despised because they 
were despicable. With him they sought and found 
shelter. He was their saviour from the, storm of human 
judgment and the biting frost of public opinion, even 
when that opinion and that judgment were re-echoed by 
the justice of their own hearts. He received them, and 
the life within them rose up, and the light shone — the 
conscious light of life — despite even of shame and self- 
reproach. If God be for us who can be against us ? In 
his name they rose from the hell of their own heart’s con- 
demnation, and went forth to do the truth in strength and 
hope. They heard and believed and obeyed his words. 
And of all words that ever were spoken, were ever 
words gentler, tenderer, humbler, lovelier — if true, or 
more arrogant, man-degrading. God-defying, — if false, 
than these, concerning which, as his, I now desire to 
speak to you : ‘ Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 

heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me ; for lam meek and lowly in heart : 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke ts 
easy, and my burden is light ’ ? 

“ Surely these words, could they but be heartily be- 
lieved, are such as every human heart might gladly hear ! 
What man is there who has not had, has not now, or 
will not have to class himself amongst the weary and 
heavy-laden } Ye who call yourselves Christians pro- 
fess to believe such rest is to be had, yet how many of 
you go bowed to the yery earth, and take no single 


300 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


step towards him who says Come^ lift not an eye to see 
whether a face of mercy may not be looking down upon 
you ! Is it that, after all, you do not believe there ever 
was such a man as they call Jesus That can hardly 
be. There are few so ignorant or so wilfully illogical 
as to be able to disbelieve in the existence of the man, or 
that he spoke words to this effect. Is it then that 
you are doubtful concerning the whole import of his ap- 
pearance } In that case, were it but as a doubtful medi- 
cine, would it not be well to make some trial of the offer 
made ? If the man said the words, he must have at least 
believed that he could fulfil them. Who that knows any 
thing of him at all can for a moment hold that this man 
spoke what he did not believe.^ The best of the Jews, 
who yet do not believe in him, say of him that he was a 
good though mistaken man. Will a man lie for the pri- 
vilege of being desipsed and rejected of men, a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief 1 What but the con- 
fidence of truth could have sustained him when he knew 
that even those who loved him would have left him had 
they believed what he told them of -his coming fate? 
But then : believing what he said, might he not have 
been mistaken ? A man can hardly be mistaken as to 
whether he is at peace or not — whether he has rest in 
his soul or not. Neither, I think, can a man well be mis- 
taken as to whence comes the peace he possesses — as 
to the well whence he draws his comfort. The miser 
knows his comfort is his gold. Was Jesus likely to be 
mistaken when he supposed himself to know that his 
comfort came from his God ? Anyhow he believed that 


A SERMON TO HELEN. 


301 


his peace came from his obedience — from his oneness 
with the will of his Father. Friends, if I had such 
peace as was plainly his, should I not know well whence 
it came ? But I think I hear some one say, ‘ Doubtless 
the good man derived comfort from the thought of his 
Father, but might he not be mistaken in supposing 
there was any Father ?’ Hear me, my friends : I dare 
not say I know there is a Father. I dare not even say I 
think ; I can only say with my whole heart I hope we 
have indeed a Father in heaven ; but this man says 
knows. Am / to say he does not know ? Can I, who 
know so much I would gladly have otherwise in myself, 
imagine him less honest than I am ? If he tells me he 
knows, I am dumb and listen. One I know : there is, 
outweighs a whole creation of voices crying each I know 
not, therefore there is not. And observe it is his own, his 
own best he wants to give them ; no bribe to obedience 
to his will, but the assurance of bliss if they will do as he 
does. He wants them to have peace — his peace — peace 
from the same source whence he has it. For what does he 
mean by Take my yoke upon you and learn of me f He does 
not mean. Wear the yoke I lay upon you, and obey my words. 
I do not say he might not have said so, or that he does 
not say what comes to the same thing at other times, 
but that is not what he says here — that is not the truth 
he would convey in these words. He means. Take upon 
you the yoke I wear ; learn to do as I do, who submit every 
thing and refer every thing to the will of my Father, yea, 
have my will only in the carrying out of his : be meek and 
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. With 


302 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


all the grief of humanity in his heart, in the face of the 
death that awaited him, he yet says. For my yoke, the 
yoke I wear, is easy, the burden I bear is light. What made 
that yoke easy— that burden light ? That it was the will 
of the Father., If a man answer, ‘ Any good man who 
believed in a God might say as much, and I do not see 
how it can help me,’ my reply is, that this man says 
Come u7ito me, and I will give you rest — asserting the pow- 
er to give perfect help to him that comes. Does all this 
look far away, my friends, and very unlike the things 
about us ? The things about you do not give you peace ; 
from something different you may hope to gain it. And 
do not our souls themselves fall out with their sur- 
roundings, and cry for a nobler, better, more beautiful 
life.^> 

“ But some one will perhaps say, ‘ It is well ; but 
were I meek and lowly in heart as he of whom you 
speak, it could not touch fny trouble : that springs not 
from myself, but from one whom I love.’ I answer, if 
the peace be the peace of the Son of Man, it must reach 
to every cause of unrest. And if thou hadst it, would it 
not then be next door to thy friend } How shall he 
whom thou lovest receive it the most readily but 
through thee who lovest him 1 What if thy faith 
should be the next step to his ? Anyhow, if this peace 
be not an all-reaching as well as a heart-filling peace ; if it 
be not a righteous and a lovely peace, and that in despite 
of all surrounding and opposing troubles, then it is not 
the peace of God, for that passeth all understanding ; 
so at least say they who profess to know, and I desire 


A SERMON TO HELEN. 


303 


to take them at their word. If thy trouble be a trouble 
thy God can not set right, then either thy God is not the 
true God or there is no true God, and the man who 
professed to reveal him led the one perfect life in virtue 
of his faith in a falsehood. Alas ! for poor men and wo- 
men and their aching hearts ! — If it offend any of you 
that 1 speak of Jesus as the 7tian who professed to reveal 
God, I answer that the man I see, and he draws me as 
with the strength of the adorable Truth ; but if in him 
I should certainly find the God for the lack of whose 
peace I and my brethren and sisters pine, then were 
heaven itself too narrow to hold my exultation, for in 
God himself alone could my joy find room. 

“ Come, then, sore heart, and see whether his heart 
can not heal thine. He knows what sighs and tears are» 
and if he knew no sin in himself, the more pitiful must 
it have been to him to behold the sighs and tears that 
guilt wrung from the tortured hearts of his brethren and 
sisters. Brothers, sisters, we niust get rid of this misery 
of ours. It is slaying us. It is turning the fair earth 
into a hell, and our hearts into its fuel. There stands 
•the man who says he knows : take him at his word. Go 
to him who says in the might of his eternal tenderness 
and his human pity, Conte unto ?ne, all ye that labor and 
are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke 
upon you, and learn of me ; for I am tneek and lowly in 
heart : and ye shall fitid rest unto your souls. For tny yoke 
is easy, and my burden is light. • 


CHAPTER XLVII. 


A SERMON TO HIMSELF. 

ONG ere he thus came to a close, Wingfold 
was blind to all and every individuality be- 
fore him — felt only the general suffering of 
the human soul, and the new-born hope for it 
that lay in the story of the ideal man, the human God. 
He did not see that Helen’s head was down on the book- 
board. She was sobbing convulsively. In some way 
the word had touched her, and had unsealed the foun- 
tain of tears, if not of faith. Neither did he see the curl 
on the lip of Bascombe, or the glance of annoyance 
which, every now and then, he cast upon the bent head 
beside him. “ What on earth are you crying about ? 
It is all in the way of his business, you know,” said Bas- 
combe’s eyes, but Helen did not hear them. One or 
two more in the congregation were weeping, and here 
and there shone a face in which the light seemed to 
prevent the tears. Polwarth shone and Rachel wept. 
For the rest, the congregation listened only with vary- 
ing degrees of attention and indifference. The larger 



A SERMON TO HIMSELF. 


305 


portion looked as if neither Wingfold nor any other 
body ever meant any thing — at least in the pulpit. 

The moment Wingfold reached the vestry he hur- 
ried off the garments of his profession, sped from the 
Abbey, and all but ran across the churchyard to his 
lodging. There he shut himself up in his chamber, 
fearful lest he should have said more than he had yet a 
right to say, and lest ebbing emotion should uncover the 
fact that he been but “ fired by the running of his own 
wheels,” and not inspired by the guide of “the fiery- 
wheeled throne, the cherub Contemplation.” There, 
from the congregation, from the church, from the ser- 
mon, from the past altogether, he turned aside his face 
and would forget them quite. What had he to do with 
the thing that was done — done with, and gone, either 
into the treasury or the lumber-room of creation ? To- 
wards the hills of help he turned his face— to the sum- 
mits over whose tops he looked for the day-spring from 
on high to break forth. If only Christ would come to 
him ! Do what he might, however, his thoughts would 
wander back to the great Gothic gulf into which he had 
been pouring out his soul, and the greater human gulfs 
that opened into the ancient pile, whose mouths were 
the faces that hid the floor beneath them— until at 
length he was altogether vexed with himself for being 
interested in what he had done instead of absorbed in 
what he had yet to do. He left, therefore, his chamber, 
and placed himself at a side-table in his sitting-room, 
while his landlady prepared the other for his dinner. 
She, too, had been at church that morning, whence it 


3o6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


came that she moved about and set the things on the 
table with unusual softness, causing him no interrup- 
tion while he wrote down a line here and there of what 
afterwards grew into the following verses — born in the 
effort to forget the things that were behind, and reach 
forth after the things that lay before him : 

Yes, master, when thou comest thou shalt find 
A little faith on earth, if I am here ! 

Thou know’st how oft I turn to thee my mind, 

How sad I wait until thy face appear ! 

Hast thou not ploughed my thorny ground full sore. 

And from it gathered many stones and sherds ? 

Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more — 

Then sow thy mustard-seed, and send thy birds. 

I love thee. Lord ; and if I yield to fears. 

Nor trust with triumph that pale doubt defies, 

Remember, Lord, ’tis nigh two thousand years. 

And I have never seen thee with mine eyes. 

And when I lift them from the wondrous tale. 

See, all about me hath so strange a show ! 

Is that thy river running down the vale ? 

Is that thy wind that through the pines doth blow? 

Could’st thou right verily appear again. 

The same who walked the paths of Palestine, 

And here in England teach thy trusting men. 

In church and field and house, with word and sign ? 


A SERMON TO HIMSELF. 


307 


Here are but lilies, sparrows, and the rest ! 

My hands on some dear proof would light and stay ! 
But my heart sees John leaning on thy breast, 

And sends them forth to do what thou dost say. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 


CRITICISM. 



EXTRAORDINARY young man !” exclaimed 
Mrs. Ramshorn as they left the church, with 
a sigh that expressed despair. “ Is he an 
infidel or a fanatic ? a Jesuit or a Socinian }” 


“ It he would pay a little more attention to his com- 
position,” said Bascombe indifferently, “ he might in 
time make of himself a good speaker. I am not at all 
sure there are not the elements of an orator in him, if he 
would only reflect a little on the fine relations between 
speech and passion, and learn of the best models how 
to play upon the feelings of a congregation. I declare I 
don’t know but he might make a great man of himself. 
As long as he don’t finish his sentences, however, jum- 
bles his figures, and begins and ends abruptly without 
either exordium or peroration, he needn’t look to make 
any thing of a preacher — and that seems his object.” 

“ If that be his object, he had better join the Metho- 
dists at once. He would be a treasure to them,” said 
Mrs. Ramshorn. 


CRITICISM. 


309 


“That is not his -object, George. How can you say 
so ?” remarked Helen quietly, but with some latent in- 
dignation. 

George smiled a rather unpleasant smile, and held his 
peace. 

Little more was said on the way home. Helen went 
to take off her bonnet, but did not reappear until she 
was called to their early Sunday dinner. 

Now George had counted upon a turn in the garden 
with her before dinner, and was annoyed — more, it is true, 
because of the emotion which he rightly judged the 
cause of her not joining him, than the necessity laid on 
him of eating his dinner without having first unburden- 
ed his mind ; but the latter fact also had its share in 
vexing him. 

When she came into the drawing-room it was plain 
she had been weeping ; but, although they were alone, 
and would probably have to wait yet a few minutes be- 
fore their aunt joined them, he resolved in his good na- 
ture to be considerate, and say nothing till after dinner, 
lest he should spoil her appetite. When they rose from 
the table she would have again escaped, but when 
George left his wine and followed her, she consented, 
at his urgent, almost expostulatory, request, to walk 
once round the garden with him. 

As soon as they were out of sight of the windows, he 
began — in the tone of one whose love it is that prompts 
rebuke — 

“ How could yoxxy my dear Helei?, have so little care of 
your health, already so much shaken with nursing your 


310 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


brother, as to yield your mind to the maundering of 
that silly ecclesiastic, and allow his false eloquence to 
untune your nerves ! Remember your health is the 
first thing — positively the first and foremost thing to be 
considered, both for your own sake and that of your 
friends. Without health, what is any thing worth.?” 

Helen made no answer, but she thought with herself 
there were two or three things for the sake of which 
she would willingly part with a considerable portion 
of her health. Her cousin imagined her conscience- 
stricken, and resumed with yet greater confidence ; 

“ If you must go to church, you ought to prepare 
yourself beforehand by firmly impressing on your mind 
the fact that the whole thing is but part of a system — 
part of a false system ; that the preacher has been 
brought up to the trade of religion, that it is his business, 
and that he must lay himself out to persuade people — 
himself first of all if he can, but anyhow his congrega- 
tion — of the truth of every thing contained in that farra- 
go of priestly absurdities called the Bible, forsooth ! 
as if there were no other book worthy to be mentioned 
beside it. Think, for a moment, how soon, were it not 
for their churches and prayers and music, and their tom- 
foolery of preaching, the whole precious edifice would 
topple about their ears, and the livelihood, the means 
of contentment and influence, would be gone from so 
many restless, paltering spirits ! So what is left them 
but to play upon the hopes and fears and diseased con- 
sicences of men as best they can ! The idiot ! To tell 
a man when he is hipped to come unto7ne I Bah ! Does 


CRITICISM. 


3II 


the fool really expect any grown man or woman to be- 
lieve in his or her brain that the man who spoke those 
words, if ever there was a man who spoke them, can at 
this moment, a 7 tni domini” — George liked to be correct — 
“ 1870, hear whatever silly words the Rev. Mr. Wing- 
fold or any other human biped may think proper to ad- 
dress to him with his face buried in his blankets by his 
bedside or in his surplice over the pulpit Bible ? — not to 
mention that they would have you believe, or be damn- 
ed to all eternity, that every thought vibrated in the 
convolutions of your brain is known to him as well as 
to yourself ! The thing is really too absurd ! Ha ! ha ! 
ha ! The man died — the death of a malefactor, they 
say — and his body was stolen from his grave by his fol- 
lowers, that they might impose thousands of years of ab- 
surdity upon the generations to come after them. And 
now, when a fellow feels miserable, he is to cry to that 
dead man who said of himself that he was meek and 
lowly in heart, and straightway the poor beggar shall 
find rest to his soul ! All I can say is that if he find 
rest so, it will be the rest of an idiot ! Believe me, 
Helen, a good Havana and a bottle of claret would be 
considerably more to the purpose ; for ladies, perhaps 
rather a cup of tea and a little Beethoven !” Here he 
laughed, for the rush of his eloquence had swept away 
his bad'humor. “ But really,” he went on, “ the whole 
thing is too absuTd to talk about. To go whining after 
an old Jew fable in these days of progress ! Why, 
what do you think is the last discovery about light ?” 

“ You will allow this much in excuse for their being 


312 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


SO rnisled,” returned Helen, with some bitterness, “that 
the old fable pretends at least to provide help for sore 
hearts ; and except it be vivisection, I — ” 

“ Do be serious, Helen,” interrupted George. “ I don’t 
object to joking, you know, but you are not joking in a 
right spirit. This matter has to do with the well-being 
of the race ; and we must think of others, however your 
Jew-gospel, in the genuine spirit of the Hebrew of all 
time, would set every body to the saving of his own 
wind-bubble of a soul. Believe me, to .live for others is 
the true wa)' to lose sight of our own fancied sorrows.” 

Helen gave a deep sigh. Fancied sorrows ! — Yes, 
gladly indeed would she live for one other at least ! Nay, 
more — she would die for him. But, alas ! what would 
that do for one whose very being was consumed with 
grief ineffable ! She must speak, else he would read her 
heart. 

“ There are real sorrows,” she said. “ They are not 
all fancied.” 

“There are very few sorrows,” returned George, “ in 
which fancy does not bear a stronger proportion than 
even a woman of sense, while the fancy is upon her, 
will be prepared to admit. I can remember bursts of 
grief, when I was a boy, in which it seemed impossible 
anything should ever console me ; but in one minute all 
would be gone, and my heart, or my spleen, or my dia- 
phragm as merry as ever. Believe that all is well, and 
you will find all will be well — very tolerably well, that 
is, considering.” 

“ Considering that the well-being has to be divided 


CRITICISM. 


313 


and apportioned and accommodated to the various 
parts of such a huge whole, and that there is no God to 
look after the business !” said Helen, who, according to 
the state of the tide in the sea of her trouble, resented 
or accepted her cousin’s teaching. 

Few women are willing to believe in death. Most of 
them love life and are faithful to hope ; and I much 
doubt whether, if Helen had but had a taste of trouble to 
rouse the woman within her before her cousin conceived 
the wish of making her a proselyte, she would have turn- 
ed even a tolerably patient ear to his instructions. Yet 
it is strange to see how even noble women, with the di- 
vine gift of imagination, may be argued into unbelief in 
their best instincts by some small man, as commonplace 
as clever, who beside them is as limestone to marble. 
The knowing craft comes creeping up into the shadow of 
the rich galleon, and lo ! with all her bountiful sails 
gleaming in the sun, the ship of God glides off in the 
wake of the felucca to the sweltering hollows betwixt 
the winds ! 

“You perplex me, my dear cousin,” said Bascombe. 
“ It is plain your nursing has been too much for you. 
You see every thing with a jaundiced eye.” 

“ Thank you, cousin George,” said Helen. “ You are 
even more courteous than usual.” 

She turned from him and went into the house. Bas- 
combe walked to the bottom of the garden and lighted 
his cigar, confessing to himself that for once he could 
not understand Helen. — Was it, then, only that he was 
ignorant of the awful fact that lay burrowing in her 


314 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


heart, or was he not ignorant also of the nature of that 
heart in which such a fact must so burrow? Was there 
any thing in his system to wipe off that burning, tor- 
turing red ? “ Such things must be : men who wrong 

society must suffer for the sake of that society.” But 
the red lay burning on the conscience of Helen too, and 
she had not murdered ! And for him who had, he gave 
society never a thought, but shrieked aloud in his 
dreams, and moaned and wept, when he waked, over 
the memory of the woman who had wronged him, and 
whom he had, if Bascombe was right, swept out of 
b«ing like an aphis from a rose-leaf. 




CHAPTER XLIX. 


A VANISHING GLIMMER. 

ELEN ran upstairs, dropped on her knees by 
her brother’s bedside, and fell into a fit of 
sobbing which no tears came to relieve. 

“ Helen ! Helen ! if you give way I shall 
go mad !” said a voice of misery from the pillow. 

She jumped up wiping her dry eyes. 

“ What a wicked, selfish, bad sister, bad nurse, bad 
every thing I am, Poldie !” she said, her tones ascend- 
ing the steps of vocal indignation as she spoke. “ But 
shall I tell you” — here she looked all about the chamber 
and into the dressing-room ere she proceeded “ — shall I 
tell you, Poldie.what it is that makes me so — 1 don’t know 
what ? — It is all the fault of the sermon 1 heard this 
morning. It is the first sermon I ever really listened to 
in my life — certainly the first I ever thought about again 
after I was out of the church. Somehow or other of late 
Mr. Wingfold has been preaching so strangely ! but this 
is the first time I have cared to listen. Do 5 ^ou know 
he preaches as if he actually believed the things he was 



3i6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


saying, and not only that, but as if he expected to persuade 
you of them too ! I used to think all clergymen believed 
them, but 1 doubt it now more than ever, for Mr.Wingfold 
speaks so differently and looks so different. I never saw 
any clergyman look like that ; and I never saw such a 
change on a man as there is on him. There must be 
something to account for it. Could it be that he has 
himself really gone to — as he says — and found rest — or 
something he hadn’t got before But you won’t know 
what I mean except I tell you first what he was preaching 
about. His text was : Come unto me, ail ye that labor 
and are heavy laden ; — a common enough text, you know. 
Poldie! but somehow it seemed fresh to him, and he made 
it look fresh to me, for I felt as if it hadn’t been intended 
for preaching about at all, but for going straight into 
people’s hearts its own self without any sermon. I 
think the way he did it was this : he first made us feel the 
sort of person that said the words, and then made us feel 
that he did say them, and so made us want to see what 
they could really mean. But of course what made them 
so different to me was”— here Helen did burst into tears, 
but she fought with her sobs and went on — “was— was 
—that my heart is breaking for you, Poldie— for ! shall 
never see you smile again, my darling !” 

She buried her lace on his pillow and Leopold uttered 
a great and exceeding bitter cry.” Her hand was on 
his mouth instantly, and her sobs ceased while the 
tears kept flowing down her white face. 

“Just think, Poldie,” she said, in a voice which she 
*eemed to have borrowed in her need from some one 


A VANISHING GLIMMER. 


317 


else “ — just think a moment ! What if there should be 
some help in the great wide universe somewhere, for — 
as wide as it is — a heart that feels for us both, as my 
heart feels for you, Poldie ! Oh ! oh ! wouldn’t it be 
grand ! Wouldn’t it be lovely to be at peace again, 
Poldie ? If there should be somebody somewhere who 
could take this gnawing serpent from my heart !” — She 
pulled wildly at her dress. — “ ‘ Come unto me,' he said, 
‘ all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest.' That’s what he said ; — oh ! if it could be true !” 

“ Surely it is — for you, best of sisters !” cried Leopold ; 
“ but what has it to do with me } Nothing. She is dead 
— I killed her. Even if God were to raise her to life 
again, he could not make it that I didn’t drive the knife 
into her heart ! Give me rest ! — why there’s the hand 
that did it ! O my God ! my God !” cried the poor 
youth, and stared at his thin, wasted hand, through 
which the light shone red, as at a conscious evil thing 
that had done the deed, and was still stained with its 
signs. 

“ God can't be very angry with you, Poldie,” sobbed 
Helen, feeling about blindly in the dark forest of her 
thoughts for some herb of comfort, and offering any 
leaf upon which her hand fell first. 

“Then he ain’t fit to be God !” cried Leopold fiercely. 
“ I wouldn’t have a word to say to a God that didn’t cut 
a man in pieces for such a deed ! O Helen, she was so 
lovely ! — and what is she now !” 

“ Surely if there were a God, he would do something 
to set it right somehow ! I know if I was God, Poldie, 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


318 


I should find some way of setting you up again, my dar- 
ling. You ain’t half as bad as you make yourself out.” 

“ You had better tell that to the jury, Helen, and see 
how they will take it,” said Leopold contemptuously. 

“The jury!” Helen almost screamed. What do you 
mean, Poldie }” 

“Well I” returned Leopold, in a tone of justification, 
but made no further answer to her question. “ All God 
can do to set it right,” he resumed, after a pause, “ is to 
damn me for ever and ever as one of the blackest crea- 
tures in creation.” 

“ That I don’t believe, anyhow !” returned Helen with 
equal vehemence and indefiniteness. 

And for the first time, George Bascombe’s teachings 
were a comfort to her. It was all nonsense about a God. 
As to her brother’s misery, it had no source but that to 
which Shakspeare attributed the misery of Macbeth — 
and who should know better than Shakspeare ? — the 
fear, namely, of people doing the like to himself ! — But 
straightway thereupon — horrible thought ! — she found 
herself — yes ! it was in her — call it thought or call it 
feeling, it was hers !— she found herself despising her 
poor crushed brother ! disgusted with him ! turning 
from him, not even in scorn of his weakness, but in an- 
ger at what he had brought upon her !— It was but a 
flash of the lightning of hell : one glance of his great, 
troubled, appealing, yet hopeless eyes, vague with the 
fogs that steamed up from the Phiegethon within him, 
was enough to turn her angerathim into hate of herself 
who had stabbed his angel in her heart. Then in herself 


^ VANISHING GLIMMER. 


3»9 


she knew that an murderers are not of Macbeth’s order, 
and that all remorse is not for oneself. 

But where was the God to be found who could and 
might help in the wretched case ? How were they to 
approach him ? Or what could he do for them ? Were 
such a being to assure Leopold that no hurt should 
come to him — even that he thought little of the wrong 
that he had done, would that make his crushed heart be- 
gin to swell again with fresh life ? would that bring 
back Emmeline from the dark grave and the worms to 
the sunny earth and the speech of men ? And whither, 
yet farther, he might have sent her, she dared not 
think. And Leopold was not merely at strife with him- 
self, but condemned to dwell with a self that was loath- 
some to him. She no longer saw any glimmer of hope 
but such as lay in George’s doctrine of death. If there 
was no helper who could clean hearts and revive the 
light of life, then welcome gaunt death ! let the grim' 
mouthed skeleton be crowned at every feast ! 


CHAPTER L. 


LET US PRAY. 

HAT was the sole chink in the prison where 
these two sat immured alone from their kind 
— except, indeed, the curate might know of 
another. 

One thing Helen had ground for being certain of — 
that the curate would tell them no more than he knew. 
Even George Bascombe, who did not believe one thing 
he said, counted him an honest man ! Might she ven- 
ture to consult him, putting the case as of a person 
who had done very wrcfng — say stolen money or com- 
mitted forgery or something ? Might she not thus gath- 
er a little honey of comfort and bring it home to Leo- 
pold ? 

Thinking thus and thus she sat silent ; and all the 
time the suffering eyes were fixed upon her face, look- 
ing for no comfort, but finding there all they ever had 
of rest. 

“ Are you thinking about the sermon, Helen ?” he 
asked. “ What was it you were telling me about it just 
now ? Who preached it ?” 



LET US PRAY. 


321 


Mr. Wingfold,” she answered listlessly. 

“ Who is Mr. Wingfold ?’* 

“ Our curate at the Abbey ?” 

“ What sort of man is he ?” 

“ Oh, a man somewhere about thirty — a straightfor- 
ward, ordinary kind of man” 

“ Ah !” said Leopold — then added after a moment — 
“ I was hoping he might be an old man, with a gray 
head, like the brahmin who used to teach me Sanscrit. 
— I wish I had treated him better, poor old fellow ! and 
learned a little more.” 

“ What does it matter about Sanscrit ! Why should 
you make troubles of trifles ?” said Helen, whose trials 
had at last begun to undermine her temper. 

“ It was not of the Sanscrit, but the moonshee I was 
thinking,” answered Leopold, mildly. 

“You darling !” cried Helen, already repentant. But 
with the revulsion she felt that this state of things 
could not long continue — she must either lose her senses, 
or turn into something hateful to herself ; the strain 
was more than she could bear. She must speak to 
somebody, and she would try whether she could not ap- 
proach the subject with Mr. Wingfold. 

But how was she to see him ? It would be awkward 
to call upon him at his lodgings, and she must see him 
absolutely alone to dare a whisper of what was on her 
mind. 

As she thus reflected, the thought of what people 
would say, were it remarked that she contrived to meet 
the curate, brought a shadow of scorn upon her face. 


322 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Leopold saw the expression, and, sensitive as an ailing 
woman, said : “ Helen, what have I done to make you 

look like that ?” 

“ How did I look, my Poldie,” she asked, turning on 
him eyes like brimming wells of love and tenderness. 

“ Let me see,” answered Leopold ; and after a mo- 
ment’s thought replied, “ as Milton’s Satan might have 
looked if Mammon had counselled him to make off with 
the crown-jewels instead of declaring war.” 

“Ah, Poldie!” cried Helen, delighted at the stray 
glance of sunshine, and kissing him as she spoke, “ you 
must really be getting better ! — I’ll tell you what !” she 
exclaimed joyfully, as a new thought struck her: “As 
soon as you are able, we will set out for New-York — to 
pay uncle Tom a visit of course ! but we shall never be 
seen or heard of again. At New-York we will change 
our names, cross to San Francisco, and from there sail 
for the Sandwich Islands. Perhaps we may be able to 
find a little one to buy, just big enough for us two ; and 
you shall marry a nice native, ” 

Her forced gaiety gave way. She burst out weeping 
afresh, and throwing her arms round him, sobbed — 

“ Poldie, Poldie ! you can pray : cry to God to help us 
somehow or other ; and if there be no God to hear us, 
then let us die together. There are easy ways of it, Pol- 
die.” 

“ Thank you ! thank you, sister dear !” he answered, 
pressing her to his bosom ; “ that is the first word of real 
comfort you have spoken to me. I shall not be afraid 
u you go with me.” 


LET US PRAY. 


323 


It was indeed a comfort to both of them to remember 
that there was this alternative equally to the gallows 
and a long life of gnawing fear and remorse. But it was 
only to be a last refuge of course. Helen withdrew to 
the dressing-room, laid herself on her bed, and began to 
compass how to meet and circumvent the curate, so as 
by an innocent cunning to wile from him on false pre- 
tences what spiritual balm she might so gain for the 
torn heart and conscience of her brother. There was 
no doubt it would be genuine, and the best to be had, 
seeing George Bascombe, who was honesty itself, judged 
the curate an honest man. But how was it to be done ? 
She could only see one way. With some inconsistency, 
she resolved to cast herself upon his generosity, and 
yet would not trust him entirely. 

She did not go down stairs again, but had her tea with 
her brother. In the evening her aunt went out to visit 
some of her pensioners, for it was one of Mrs. Rams- 
horn’s clerical duties to be kind to the poor — a good 
deal at their expense, I am afraid — and presently George 
came to the door of the sick-room and begged her to go 
down and sing to him. Of course, in the house of a 
dean's relict, no music except sacred must be heard on 
a Sunday ; but to have Helen sing it, George would con- 
descend even to a hymn tune ; and there was Handel, 
for whom he professed a great admiration ! What mat- 
tered his subjects ? He could but compose the sort of 
thing the court wanted of him, and in order to that, had 
to fuddle his brains first, poor fellow ! So said George, 
at least. 


324 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


That Leopold might not hear them talking outside 
his door, a thing which no invalid likes, Helen went 
down stairs with her cousin ; but although she had of- 
ten sung from Handel for his pleasure, content to re- 
produce the bare sounds and caring nothing about the 
leelings both they and the words represented, she posi- 
tively refused this evening to gratify him. She must 
go back to Leopold. She would sing from The Creation 
a he liked, but nothing out of The Messiah would she 
or could she sing. 

Perhaps she could herself hardly have told why, but 
George perceived the lingering influence of the morn- 
ing’s sermon, and more vexed than he had ever yet 
been with her, for he could not endure her to cherish the 
least prejudice in favor of what he despised, he said he 
would overtake his aunt, and left the house. The mo- 
ment he was gone, she went to the piano, and began to 
sing. Comfort ye. When she came to Come unto me, she 
broke down. But with sudden resolution she rose, and 
having opened every door between it and her brother, 
raised the top of the piano, and then sang. Come unto 
me as she had never sung in her life. Nor did she stop 
there. At the distance of six of the wide standing 
houses, her aunt and cousin heard her singing Thou 
didst not leave, with the tone and expression of a pro- 
phetess — of a Maenad, George said. She was still sing- 
ing when he opened the door, but when they reached 
the drawing-room she was gone. She was. kneeling be- 
side her brother. 


CHAPTER LI. 


TWO LETTERS. 

HE next morning as Wingfold ate his break 
fast by an open window looking across the 
churchyard, he received a letter by the local 
post. It was as follows : — 

“ Dear Mr. Wingfold, I am about to take an unheard- 
of liberty, but my reasons are such as make me bold. 
The day may come when I shall be able to tell you them 
all. Meantime I hope you can help me. I want very 
much to ask your counsel upon a certain matter, and I 
can not beg you to call, for my aunt knows nothing of it. 
Could you contrive a suitable way of meeting? You 
may imagine my necessity is. grievous when I thus ex- 
pose myself to the possible bitterness of my own after 
judgment. But I must have confidence in the man who 
spoke as you did yesterday morning. I am, dear Mr. 
Wingfold, sincerely yours, Helen Lingard. 

“ P.S. — I shall be walking along Pine Street from our 
end, at eleven o’clock to-morrow.” 

The curate was not taken with a great surprise. But 
something like fear overshadowed him at finding his 
sermons come back upon him thus. Was he, an unbe- 
lieving laborer, to go reaping with his blunt and broken 



326 


THOMAS WINGFOID, CURATE. 


sickle where the corn was ripest ! But he had no time 
to think about that now. It was nearly ten o’clock, and 
she would be looking for her answer at eleven. He had 
not to think long, however, before he saw what seemed 
a suitable plan to suggest ; whereupon he wrote as fol- 
lows : 

“ Dear Miss Lingard, I need not say that I am entirely 
at your service. But I am doubtful if the only way that 
occurs to me will commend itself to you. I know what 
I am about to propose is safe, but you may not have 
sufficient confidence in my judgment to accept it as such. 

“ Doubtless you have seen the two deformed per- 
sons, an uncle and niece, named Polwarth,who keep the 
gate of Osterfield Park. I know them well, and, strange 
as it may seem, I must tell you, in order that you may 
partake pf my confidence, that whatever change you 
may have observed in my public work, is owing to the 
influence of those two, who have more faith in God than 
I have ever met with before. It may not be amiss to 
mention also that, although poor and distorted, they are 
of gentle blood as well as noble nature. With this pre- 
amble, I venture to propose that you should meet me 
at their cottage. To them it would not appear at all 
strange that one of my congregation should wish to see 
me alone, and I know you may trust their discretion. 
But while I write thus with all confidence in you and in 
them, I must tell you that I have none in myself. I feel 
both ashamed and perplexed that you should imagine 
any help in me. Of all I know, I am the poorest 
creature to give counsel. All I can say for myself is. 


TWO LETTERS. 


327 


that I think I see a glimmer of light, and light is light 
through whatever cranny, and into whatever poverty- 
stricken chamber it may fall. Whatever I see, I will 
say. If I can see nothing to help you, I will be silent. 
And yet I may be able to direct you where to find what 
I can not give you. If you accept my plan, and will ap- 
point day and hour, I shall acquaint the Polwarths with 
the service we desire of them. Should you object to it, 
I shall try to think of another. I am, dear Miss Lin- 
gard, yours very truly, Thomas Wingfold.” 

He placed the letter between the pages of a pamphlet, 
took his hat and stick, and was walking dov/n Pine 
Street as the Abbey clock struck eleven. Midway he 
met Helen, shook hands with her, and after an indiffe- 
rent word or two, gave her the pamphlet, and bade her 
good morning. 

Helen hurried home. It had required all her self- 
command to look him in the face, and her heart beat 
almost painfully as she opened the letter. 

She could not but be pleased — even more than pleas- 
ed with it. If the secret had been her own, she thought 
she could have trusted him entirely, but she must not 
expose poor Leopold. 

’ By the next post, the curate received a grateful an- 
swer, appointing the time, and expressing perfect readi- 
ness to trust those whom he had tried. 

She was received at the cottage-door by Rachel, who 
asked her to walk into the garden, where Mr. Wingfold 
was expecting her. The curate led her to a seat over- 
grown with honeysuckle. 


CHAPTER LII. 


ADVICE IN THE DARK. 

T was some moments before either of them 
spoke, and it did not help Wingfold that she 
sat clouded by a dark-colored veil. At 
length he said, 

“ You must not fear to trust me because I doubt my 
ability to help you. I can at least assure you of my 
sympathy. The trouble I have myself had, enables me 
to promise you that.” 

“ Can you tell me,” she said, from behind more veils 
than that of lace, “ how to get rid of a haunting idea 

“ That depends on the nature of the idea, I should im- 
agine,” answered the curate. “ Such things sometimes 
arise merely from the state of the health, and there the 
doctor is the best help.” 

Helen shook her head, and smiled behind her veil a 
grievous smile. The curate paused, but receiving no 
assistance, ventured on again. 

“ If it be a thought of something past and gone, for 
which nothing can be done, I think activity in one’s 
daily work must be the best aid to endurance.” 



ADVICE IN THE DARK. 


329 


“ Oh dear ! oh dear !” sighed Helen, “ — when one has 
no heart to endure, and hates the very sunlight !— You 
wouldn’t talk about work to a man dying of hunger, 
would you ?” 

“ I’m not sure about that.” 

“ He wouldn’t heed yoti.” 

“ Perhaps not.” 

“ What would you do then ?” 

“ Give him some food, and try him again, I think.” 

“ Then give me some food — some, hope, I mean, and 
try me again. Without that, I don’t care about duty or 
life or any thing.” 

“ Tell me then what is the matter : I may be able to 
hint at some hope,” said Wingfold very gently. “Do 
you call yourself a Christian ?” 

The question would to most people have sounded 
strange, abrupt, inquisitorial ; but to Helen it sounded 
not one of them all. 

“ No,” she answered. 

“ Ah !” said the curate a little sadly, and went on. 
“ Because then I could have said, you know where to 
go for comfort. Might it not be well however to try if 
there is any to be had from him that said Coine unto me 
and I will give you rest f' 

“ I can do nothing with that. I have tried and tried to 
pray, but it is of no us^. There is such a weight on my 
heart that no power of mine can lift it up. I suppose 
it is because I can not believe there is any one hearing 
a word I say. Yesterday, when I got alone in the park, 
1 prayed aloud ; I thought that perhaps even if he might 


330 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


not be able to read what was in my heart, he might be 
able to hear my voice. I was even foolish enough to 
wish that I knew Greek, because perhaps he would un- 
derstand me better if I were to pray in Greek. My brain 
seems turning. It is no use ! There is no help any 
where !” ' 

She tried hard but could not prevent a sob. And then 
came a burst of tears. 

“ Will you not tell me something about it ?” said the 
curate, yet more gently. Oh, how gladly would he re- 
lieve her heart if he might ! “ Perhaps Jesus has be- 

gun to give you help, though you do not know it yet,” 
he said. “ His Help may be on the way to you, or even 
with you, only you do not recognize it for what it is. 
I have known that kind of thing. Tell me some fact or 
some feeling I can lay hold of. Possibly there is some- 
thing you ought to do and are not doing, and that is 
why you can not rest. I think Jesus would give no rest 
except in the way of learning of him.” 

Helen’s sobs ceased, but what appeared to the curate 
a long silence followed. A length she said, with falter- 
ing voice : 

“ Suppose it were a great wrong that had been done, 
and that was the unendurable thought ? Suppose, I say, 
that was what made me miserable Y' 

“ Then you must of course m^ke all possible repara- 
tion,” answered Wingfold at once. 

“ But if none were possible — what then ?” 

Here the answer was not so plain and the curate had 
to think. .... . .. 


ADVICE IN THE DARK. 


331 


“ At least,” he said at length, “ you could confess the 
wrong, and ask forgiveness.” 

“ But if that were also impossible,” said Helen, shud- 
dering inwardly to find how near she drew to the edge 
of the awful fact. 

Again the curate took time to reply. 

“ I am endeavoring to answer your questions as well 
as I can,” he said ; but it is hard to deal with generali- 
ties. You see how useless, for that very reason, my an- 
swers have as yet been ! Still I have something more 
to say, and hesitate only because it may imply more 
confidence than I dare profess, and of all things I dread 
untruth. But I am honest in this much at least, that I 
desire with true heart to find a God who will acknow- 
ledge me as his creature and make me his child, and if 
there be any God I am nearly certain he will do so ; for 
surely there can not be any other kind of God than the 
Father of Jesus Christ ! In the strength of this much 
of conscious truth I venture to say— that no crime can 
be committed against a creature without being commit- 
ted also against the creator of that creature ; therefore 
surely the first step for any one who has committed such, 
a crime must be to humble himself before God, confess 
the sin, and ask forgiveness and cleansing. If there is 
any thing in religion at all it must rest upon an actual 
individual communication between God and the crea- 
ture he has made ; and if God heard the man’s prayer 
and forgave him, then the man would certainly know it 
in his heart and be consoled— perhaps by the gift of hu- 
mility.” 


332 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“Then you think confession to God is all that is re- 
quired ?” 

“ If there be no one else wronged to whom confession 
can be made. If the case were mine — and sometimes I 
much fear that in taking holy orders I have grievously 
sinned — I should then do just as I have done with re- 
gard to that — cry to the living power which I think ori- 
ginated me, to set the matter right for me.” 

“ But if it could not be set right ?” 

“ Then to forgive and console me.” 

“Alas ! alas ! that he will not hear of. He would ra- 
ther be punished than consoled. I fear for his brain. 
But indeed that might be well.” 

She had gone much farther than she had intended ; 
but the more doubtful help became, the more was she 
driven by the agony of a perishing hope to search the 
heart of Wingfold. 

Again the curate pondered. 

“ Are you sure,” he said at length, “ that the person 
of whom you speak is not neglecting something he 
ought to do — something he knows, perhaps ?” 

He had come back to the same with which he had 
started. 

Through her veil he saw her turn deadly white. Ever 
since Leopold said the word jury, a ghastly fear had 
haunted Helen. She pressed her hand on her heart and 
made no answer. 

“ I speak from experience,” the curate went on, “ from 
what else could I speak ? I know that so long as 
we hang back from doing what conscience urges, there 


ADVICE IN THE DARK. 


333 


is no peace for us. I will not say our prayers are not 
heard, for Mr. Polwarth has taught me that-the most 
precious answer prayer can have lies in the growing 
strength of the impulse towards the dreaded duty, and 
in the ever sharper stings of the conscience. I think I 
asked already whether there were no relatives to whom 
reparation could be made }” 

“ Yes, yes gasped Helen, “ and I told you repara- 
tion was impossible.” 

Her voice had sunk almost to a groan. 

“ But at least confession — ” said Wingfold — and starts 
ed from his seat. 


CHAPTER LIII. 


INTERCESSION. 

STIFLED cry had interrupted him. Helen 
was pressing her handkerchief to her mouth. 
She rose and ran from him. Wingfold stood 
alarmed and irresolute. She had not gone 
many steps, however, when her pace slackened, her knees 
gave way, and she dropped senseless on the grass. 
Wingfold ran to the house for water. Rachel hastened 
to her assistance, and Polwarth followed. It was some 
time before they succeeded in reviving her. 

When at length the color began to return a little to 
her cheek, Polwarth dropped on his knees at her feet. 
Wingfold in his ministrations was already kneeling on 
one side of her, and Rachel now kneeled on the other. 
Then Polwarth said, in his low and husky, yet not alto- 
gether unmelodious voice, 

“ Life eternal, this lady of thine hath a sore heart 
and we can not help her. Thou art Help, O mighty 
love. They who know thee best rejoice in thee most. 
As thy sun that shines over our heads, as thy air that 
flows into our bodies, thou art above, around, and in us\ 



INTERCESSION. 


335 


thou art in her heart ; oh, speak to her there ; let her 
know thy will, and give her strength to do it, O Father 
of Jesus Christ ! Amen.” 

When Helen opened her eyes, she saw only the dark 
leaves of an arbutus over her, and knew nothing be- 
yond a sense of utter misery and weakness, with an im- 
pulse to rise and run. With an effort she moved her 
head a little, and then she saw the three kneeling forms, 
the clergyman with bowed head, and the two dwarfs 
with shining upturned faces ; she thought she was dead 
and they were kneeling about her corpse. Her head 
dropped with a weary sigh of relief, she lay passive, and 
heard the dwarf’s prayer. Then she knew that she was 
not dead, and the disappointment was bitter. But she 
thought of Leopold, and was consoled. After a few 
minutes of quiet, they helped her into the house, and 
laid her on a sofa in the parlor. 

“ Don’t be frightened dear lady,” said the little wo- 
man; “nobody shall come near you. We will watch 
you as if you were the queen. I am going to get some 
tea for you.” 

But the moment she left the room, Helen got up. 
She could not endure a moment longer in the place. 
There was a demon at her brother’s ear, whispering to 
him to confess, to rid himself of his torture by the aid 
of the law ; she must rush home and drive him away. 
She took her hat in her hand, opened the door softly, 
and ere Rachel could say a word, had flitted through the 
kitchen, and was amongst the trees on the opposite side 
cf the road. Rachel ran to the garden to her father and 


336 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


VVingfold. They looked at each other for a moment in 
silence. 

“ I will follow her,” said Wingfold. “ She may faint 
again. If she does I shall whistle.” 

He followed, and kept her in sight until she was safe 
in her aunt’s garden. 

“ What zs to be done }” he said, returning in great 
trouble. “ I do not think I made any blunder, but there 
she is gone in tenfold misery ! I wish I could tell you 
what passed, but that of course I can not.” 

“ Of course not,” returned Poiwarth. “ But the fact 
of her leaving you so is no sign that you said the wrong 
thing,— rather the contrary. When people seek advice, 
it is too often in the hope of finding the adviser side 
with their second familiar self, instead of their awful 
first self, of which they know so little. Do not be anx- 
ious. You have done your best. Wait for what will 
come next.” 


CHAPTER LIV. 


HELEN ALONE. 

ELEN tottered to a little summer-house in the 
garden, which had been her best retreat 
since she had given her room to her brother, 
and there seated herself to regain breath 
and composure ere she went to him. She had sought 
the door of Paradise, and the door of hell had been 
opened to her ! If the frightful idea which, she did not 
doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should 
now be encouraged, there was nothing but black mad- 
ness before her ! Her Poldie on the scaffold ! God in 
heaven ! Infinitely rather would she poison herself and 
him ! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled 
he had been when she said something about their dying 
together, and that reassured her a little : no ; she was 
certain Leopold would never yield himself to public 
shame ! But she must take care that foolish, extrava- 
gant curate should not come near him ! There was no 
knowing to what he might persuade him ! Poor Poldie 
was so easily led by any show of nobility — any thing 
that looked grand or self-sacrificing ! 



338 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Helen’s only knowledge of guilt came from the pale 
image of it lifted above her horizon by the refraction of 
her sympathy. She did not know, perhaps never would 
understand, the ghastly horror of conscious guilt, beside 
which there is no evil else. Agonies of injury a man 
may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise 
above them tenfold a man, who, were he to awake to 
the self-knowledge of a crime, would sink into a heap of 
ruin. Then, indeed, if there be no God, or one that has 
not an infinite power of setting right that which has 
gone wrong with his work, then indeed welcome the 
faith, for faith it may then be called, of such as say there 
is no hereafter ! Helen did not know to what gulfs of 
personal shame, nay, to what summits of public execra- 
tion, a man may be glad to flee for refuge from the 
fangs of home-born guilt — if so be there is any refuge 
to be found in either. And some kind of refuge there 
does seem to be. Strange it is and true, that in publi- 
city itself lies some relief from the gnawing of the worm 
— as if even a cursing humanity were a barrier of pro- 
tection between the torn soul and its crime. It flees to 
its kind for shelter from itself. Hence, I imagine, in 
part, may the coolness of some criminals be accounted 
for. Their quietness is the relief brought by confession 
— even confession but to their fellows. Is it that the 
crime seems then lifted a little from their shoulders, 
and its weight shared by the race ? 

Helen had hoped that the man who had spoken in 
public so tenderly, and at the same time so powerfully, 
of the saving heart of the universe, that would have no 


HELEN ALONE. 


339 


divisions of pride, no scatterings of hate, but of many 
would make one, would in private have spoken yet 
sweeter words of hope and consolation, which she might 
have carried home in gladness to her sick-souled bro- 
ther, to comfort and strengthen him — words of might to 
allay the burning of the poison within him, and make 
him feel that after all there was yet a place for him in 
the universe, and that he was no outcast of Gehenna. 
But instead of such words of gentle might, like those of 
the man of whom he was so fond of talking, he had only 
spoken drearily of duty, hinting at a horror that would 
plunge the whole ancient family into a hell of dishonor 
and contempt ! It did indeed show what mere heartless 
windbags of effete theology those priests were ! Skele- 
tons they were, and no human beings at all ! — Her fa- 
ther ! — the thought of him was distraction ! Her mother ! 
Oh, if Leopold had had her mother for his too, instead 
of the dark-skinned woman with the flashing eyes, he 
would never have brought this upon them ! It was all 
his mother’s fault — the fault of her race — and of the 
horrible drug her people had taught him to take ! And 
was he to go and confess it, and be tried for it, and 

be ? Great God ! — And here was the priest actually 

counselling what was worse than any suicide ! 

Suddenly, however, it occurred to her that the curate 
had had no knowledge of the facts of the case, and had 
therefore been compelled to talk at random. It was im- 
possible he should suspect the crime of which her bro- 
ther had been guilty, and therefore could not know the 
frightful consequences of such a confession as he had 


340 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


counselled. Had she not better then tell him all, and 
so gather from him some right and reasonable advice for 
the soothing of the agonies of her poor broken-winged 
angel ? But alas ! what security had she that a man ca- 
pable of such priestly severity and heartlessness — her 
terrors made her thus inconsequent — would not himself 
betray the all but innocent sufferer to the vengeance of 
justice so-called ? No ; she would venture no further. 
Sooner would she go to George Bascombe — from whom 
she not only could look for no spiritual comfort, but 
whose theories were so cruel against culprits of all 
sorts ! Alas, alas ! she was alone ! absolutely alone in 
the great waste, death-eyed universe ! — But for a man to 
talk so of the tenderness of Jesus Christ and then serve 
her as the curate had done — it was indeed shameless ! 
He would never have treated a poor wretched woman like 
that ! — And as she said thus to herself, again the words 
sounded in the ear of her heart : “ Come uiito me, all ye 

that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." 
Whence came the voice ? From her memory, or from 
that inner chamber of the spirit which the one spirit-bear- 
ing spirit keeps for his own in every house that he builds 
— alas so long in most human houses shut away from 
the rest of the rooms and forgotten, or recollected with 
uneasiness, as a lumber-closet in which lie too many 
things that had better not be looked into ? But what 
matter where the voice that said them, so long as the 
words were true, and she might believe them ! — what- 
ever is true can be believed of the true heart. • 

Ere she knew, Helen was on her knees, with her 


HELEN ALONE. 


341 


head on the chair, yet once more crying to the hearer of 
cries — possible or impossible being she knew not in the 
least, but words reported of him had given birth to the 
cry — to help her in her dire need. 

Instead of any word, or thought even, coming to her 
that might be fancied an answer, she was scared from her 
knees by an approaching step — that of the housekeeper 
come to look for her with the message from her aunt 
that Leopold was more restless than usual, not at all like 
himself, and she could do nothing with him. 


CHAPTER LV. 


A HAUNTED SOUL. 

ELEN rose and hastened to her brother, with 
a heart of lead in her body. 

She started when she saw him ; some 
change had passed on him since the morn- 
ing ! Was that eager look in his eyes a fresh access of 
the fever? That glimmer on his countenance, doubtful 
as the first of the morning, when the traveller knows 
not whether the light be in the sky or only in his brain, 
did look more like a dawn of his old healthful radiance 
than any fresh fire of madness ; but at the same time he 
appeared more wasted and pinched and death-like than 
she had yet seen him. Or was it only in her eyes — was 
she but reading in his face the agony she had herself gone 
through that day ? 

“ Helen, Helen ; ” he cried as she entered the room, 
“ come here, close to me.” 

She hastened to him, sat down on the bedside, took his 
hand and looked as cheerfully as she could, yet it was 
but the more woefully, in his face. 



A HAUNTED SOUL. 


343 


“ Helen,” he said again, and he spoke with a strange 
expression in his voice, for it seemed that of hope, “ I 
have been thinking all day of what you told me on Sun- 
day !” 

“ What was that, Poldie !” asked Helen with a pang 
of fear. 

“ Why, those words of ’course — what else ! You sang 
them to me afterwards, you know. Helen, I should like 
to see Mr. Wingfold. Don’t you think he might be able 
to do something ?” 

“ What sort of thing, Poldie ?” she faltered, growing 
sick at heart. — Was this what came of praying ! she 
thought bitterly. 

“ Something or other — I don’t know what exactly,” 
returned Leopold. — “ Oh Helen !” he broke out with a 
cry, stifled by the caution that had grown habitual to 
both of them, “ is there no help of any kind anywhere ? 
Surely Mr. Wingfold could tell me something — comfort 
me somehow, if I were to tell him all about it ! I could 
trust the man that said such things as those you told 
me. That I could ! — Oh ! I wish I hadn’t run away, but 
had let them take me and hang me !” 

Helen felt herself growing white. She turned away 
and pretended to search for something she had dropped. 

“ I don’t think he would be of the slightest use to you,” 
she said, still stooping. 

And she felt like a devil dragging the soul of her 
brother to hell. But that was a foolish fancy, and must 
be resisted ! 

Not if I told him everything ?” Leopold hissed from 


344 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


between his teeth in the struggle to keep down a 
shriek. 

“ No, not if you told him everything,” she answered, 
and felt like a judge condemning him to death. 

“ What is he there for then 7 ” said Leopold indig- 
nantly, and turned his face to the wall and moaned. 

Helen had not yet thought of asking herself whether 
her love to her brother was all clear love, and nowise 
mingled with selfishness — whether in the fresh horror 
that day poured into the cup that had seemed already 
running over, it was of her brother only she thought, 
or whether threatened shame to herself had not a part 
in her misery. But as far as she was aware, she was 
quite honest in saying that the curate could not com- 
fort him — for what attempt even had he made to com- 
fort her ? What had he done but utter commonplaces 
and truisms about duty } And who could tell but — 
indeed was she not certain that such a man, bringing the 
artillery of his fanaticism to bear upon her poor boy’s 
wild, enthusiastic temperament, would speedily persuade 
him to make a reality of that terrible thing he had 
already thought of, that hideously impossible possibility 
which she dared not even allow to present itself before 
her imagination ? So he lay and moaned, and she sat 
crushed and speechless with despairing misery. 

All at once Leopold sat straight up, his eyes fixed and 
flaming, his face white ; he looked like a corpse 
possessed by a spirit of fear and horror. Helen’s heart 
swelled into her throat, the muscles of her face con- 
tracted with irresistible rigor, and she felt it grow ex- 


A HAUNTED SOUL. 


345 


actly like his, while with wide eyes she stared at him, and 
he stared at something which lest she also should see, 
she dared not turn her head. Surely, she thought after- 
wards, she must have been at that moment in the pre- 
sence of something unearthly ! Her physical being was 
wrenched from her control, and she must simply sit and 
wait until the power or influence, whichever it might be, 
should pass away. How long it was ere it relaxed its hold 
she could not tell ; it could not have been long, she 
thought. Suddenly the light sank from Leopold’s eyes, 
his muscles relaxed, he'fell back motionless, apparently 
senseless, on the pillow, and she thought be was dead. 
The same moment she was free ; the horror had departed 
from her own atmosphere too, and she made haste to 
restore him. But in all she did for him, she felt like 
the executioner who gives restoratives to the wretch 
that has fainted on the rack or the wheel. What right 
had she^ she thought, to multiply on him his moments 
of torture ? If the cruel power that had created him for 
such misery, whoever, whatever, wherever he might be, 
chose thus to torture him, was she, his only friend, out 
of the selfish affection he had planted in her, to lend 
herself his tool ? Yet she hesitated not a single moment 
in her ministrations. 

There is so much passes in us of which our conscious- 
ness takes no grasp, — or but with such a flitting touch as 
scarcely to hand it over to the memory — that I feel en- 
couraged to doubt whether ever there was a man abso- 
lutely without hope. That there have been, alas are 
many, who are aware of no ground of hope, nay even 


346 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


who feel no glimmer in them of any thing they can call 
hope, I know ; but I think in them all is an underlying 
unconscious hope. I think that not one in all the world 
has more than a shadowy notion of what hopelessness 
means. Perhaps utter hopelessness is the outer dark- 
ness. 

At length Leopold opened his eyes, gave a terrified 
glance around, held out his arms to her, and drew her 
down upon his face. 

“ I saw her !” he said, in a voice that sounded as if it 
came from the grave, and she hfeard it in her heart. 

“ Nonsense, dear Poldie ! it was all fancy — nothing 
more,” she returned, in a voice almost as hollow as his ; 
and the lightness of the words uttered in such a tone 
jarred dismally on her own ear. 

“Fancy !” he repeated; “ I know what fancy is as well 
as any man or woman born : that was no fancy. She 
stood there, by the wardrobe — in the same dress ! — her 
face as white as her dress ! And — listen !— I will tell 
you—\ will soon satisfy you it could be no fancy.” — Here 
he pushed her from him and looked straight in her eyes. 
— “I saw her back reflected in the mirror of the ward- 
robe door, and” — here the fixed look of horror threat- 
ened to return upon his face, but he went on— “ listen,— 
there was a worm crawling on it, over her lovely white 
shoulder ! Ugh ! I saw it in the mirror !” 

His voice had risen to a strangled shriek, his face was 
distorted, and he shook like a child on the point of 
yelling aloud in an agony of fear. Helen clasped his 
face between her hands, and gathering courage from 


A HAUNTED SOUL. 


347 


despair, if indeed that be a possible source of courage, 
and it is not gathered rather from the hidden hope of 
which I speak, and the love that will cleave and not 
forsake, she set her teeth and said : 

“ Let her come then, Poldie ! I am with you and I 
defy her ! She shall know that a sister’s love is 
stronger than the hate of a jilt — even if you did kill her. 
Before God, Poldie, I would after all rather be you than 
she. Say what you will, she had herself to blame, and 
don’t doubt did twenty worse things than you did when 
you killed her.” 

But Leopold seemed not to hear a word she said, and 
lay with his face to the wall. 

At length he turned his head suddenly, and said, 

“ Helen, if you don’t let me see Mr. Wingfold, I shall 
go mad, and then everything will come out.” 


CHAPTER LVI. 


COMPELLED CONFIDENCE. 



ELEN flew to the dressing-room to hide her 
dismay, and there cast herself on the bed. 
The gray fate above, or the awful Demo- 
gorgon beneath, would have its way! Whe- 
ther It was a living Will or but the shadow of the 
events it seemed to order, it was too much for her. She 
had no choice but yield. She rose and returned to her 
brother. 

“ I am going to find Mr. Wingfold,” she said in a 
hoarse voice, as she took her hat. 

“ Don’t be long then, Helen,” returned Leopold. I 
can’t bear you out of my sight. And don’t let aunt come 
into the room. She might come again, you know, and 
then all would be out. — Bring him with you, Helen.” 

“ I will,” answered Helen, and went. 

The curate might have returned ; she would seek him 
first at his lodging. She cared nothing about appear- 
ances now. 

It was a dull afternoon. Clouds had gathered, and the 
wind was chilly. It seemed to blow out of the church 


COMPELLED CONFIDENCE. 


349 


which stood up cold and gray against the sky, filling the 
end of the street. What a wretched, horrible world it 
was ! She approached the church, and entered the 
churchyard from which it rose like a rock from the Dead 
Sea, a type of the true church, around whose walls lie 
the dead bodies of the old selves left behind by those 
who enter. Helen would have envied the dead, who lay 
so still under its waves ; but alas ! if Leopold was right, 
they but roamed elsewhere in their trouble, and were 
no better for dying. 

She hurried across, and reached the house, but Mr. 
Wingfold had not yet returned, and she hurried back 
across it again to tell Leopold that she must go farther 
to find him. 

The poor youth was already more composed : what 
will not the vaguest hope sometimes do for a man ! 
Helen told him she had seen the curate in the park, 
when she was out in the morning, and he might be there 
still, or she might meet him coming back. Leopold 
only begged her to make haste. She took the road to 
the lodge. 

She did not meet him, and it was with intense repug- 
nance that she approached the gate. 

“ Is Mr. Wingfold here ?” she asked of Rachel, as if 
she had never spoken to her before ; and Rachel, 
turning paler at the sight of her, answered that he was 
in the garden with her uncle, and went to call him. 

The moment he appeared, she said, in atone rendered 
by conflicting emotions inexplicable, and sounding 
almost rude. 


350 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Will you come to my brother ? He is very ill, and 
wants to see you.” 

“ Certainly,” returned Wingfold, “ I will go with you 
at once.” 

But in his heart he trembled at the thought of being 
looked to for consolation and counsel — and that appa- 
rently in a case of no ordinary kind. Most likely he 
would not know what to say or how to behave himself ! 
How different it would be if with all his heart he be- 
lieved the grand lovely things recorded in the book of 
his profession ! Then indeed he might enter the cham- 
bers of sin and fear and guilt with the innocent confi- 
dence of a winged angel of comfort and healing ! But 
now the eyes of his understanding were blinded with 
the ifs and buts that flew swarming like black muscce 
wherever they turned. Still he would, nay, he jnust go 
and do his best. 

They walked across the park to reach the house by 
the garden, and for some distance they walked in silence 
At length, Helen said ; 

“ You must not encourage my brother to talk much, 
if you please ; and )^ou must not mind what he says : 
he has had brain fever, and sometimes talks strange- 
ly. But on the other hand if he fancies you don’t be- 
lieve him, it will drive him wild — so you must take care 
— please ?” 

Her voice was like that of a soul trying to speak with 
unproved lips. 

Miss Lingard,” said Wingfold, slowly and quietly — 
and if his voice trembled, he only was aware of it, “ I 


COMPELLED CONFIDENCE. 


351 


can not see your face, therefore you must pardon me if I 
ask you — are you quite honest with me ?” 

Helen’s first feeling was anger. She held her peace 
for a time. Then she said, 

“ So, Mr. Wingfold ! — that is the way you help the 
helpless !” 

“ How can any man help without knowing what has 
to be helped?” returned the curate. “The very being 
of his help depends upon his knowing the truth. It 
is very plain you do not trust me, and equally impos- 
sible I should be of any service so long as the case is 
such.” 

Again Helen held her peace. Resentment and dislike 
towards himself combined with terror of his anticipated 
counsel to-render her speechless. 

Her silence lasted so long that Wingfold came to the 
resolution of making a venture that had occurred to 
him more than once that morning. Had he not been 
convinced that a soul was in dire misery, he would not 
have had recourse to the seeming cruelty. 

“Would this help to satisfy you that, whatever my 
advice may be worth, at least my discretion may be 
trusted !” he said.. 

They were at the moment passing through a little 
thicket in tfie park, where nobody could see them, and 
as he spoke, he took the knife-sheath from his pocket, 
and held it out to her. 

She started like a young horse at something dead : 
she had never seen it, but the shape had an association. 
She paled, retreated a step, with a drawing back of her 


352 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


head and neck and a spreading of her nostrils, stared 
for a moment, first at the sheath, then at the curate, 
gave a little moan, bit her under lip hard, held out her 
hand, but as if she were afraid to touch the thing, and 
said 

“ What is it ? Where did you find it ?” 

She would have taken it, but Wingfold held it fast. 

“ Give it to me,” she said imperatively. “ It is mine. 
I lost it.” 

“ There is something dark on the lining of it,” said 
the curate, and looked straight into her eyes. 

She let go her hold. But almost the same moment 
she snatched the sheath out of his hand and held it to 
her bosom, while her look of terror changed into one of 
defiance. Wingfold made no attempt to recover it. She 
put it in her pocket, and drew herself up. 

“ What do you mean ?” she said, in a voice that was 
hard, yet trembled. 

She felt like one that sees the vultures above him, and 
lifts a one movable finger in defence. Then with sud- 
den haughtiness both of gesture and word : 

“ You have been acting the spy, sir !” 

“ No,” returned the curate quietly. “ The sheath was 
committed to my care by one whom certain facts that 
had come to his knowledge — certain words he had 
overheard — ” 

He paused. She shook visibly, but still would hold 
what ground might yet be left her. 

“ Why did you not give it me before T* she asked. 

** In the public street, or in your aunt’s presence?” 


COMPELLED CONFIDENCE 


353 


“ You are cruel !” she panted. Her strength was 
going. "What do you know }'* 

" Nothing so well as that I want to serve you, and you 
may trust me.” 

“ What do you mean to do 
" My best to help you and your brother.” 

" But to what end }” 

" To any, end that is right.” 

" But how } What would you tell him to do 
" You must help me to discover what he ought to do.” 

“ Not — ” she cried, clasping her hands and dropping 
on her knees before him, “ — you will not tell him to 
give himself up } Promise me you will not, and I will 
tell you everything. He shall do any thing you please 
but that ! Any thing but that !” 

Wingfold’s heart was sore at sight of her agony. He 
would have raised her with soothing words of sympathy 
and assurance, but still she cried, " Promise me you will 
not make him give himself up.” 

" I dare not promise anything,” he said. " I must do 
what I may see to be right. Believe me, I have no wish 
to force myself into your confidence, but you have let . 
me see that you are in great trouble and in need of 
help, and I should be unfaithful to my calling if I did 
not do my best to make you trust me.” 

A pause followed. Helen rose despairingly, and they 
resumed their walk. Just as they reached the door in 
the fence which would let them out upon the meadow 
in sight of the Manor-house, she turned to him and said. 

" I will trust you, Mr. Wingfold. I mean, I will take 


354 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


you to my brother, and he shall do as he thinks pro- 
per.” 

They passed out and walked across the meadow in 
silence. In the passage under the fence, as she turned 
from closing the door behind them, she stood and pressed 
her hand to her side. 

“ O Mr. Wingfold,” she cried, “ my heart will break 1 
He has no one but me ! No one but me to be mothef 
and sister and all to him ! He is 7iot wicked, my poo/ 
darling !” 

She caught the curate by the arm with a grasp which 
left its mark behind it, and gazed appealingly into hi? 
face ; in the dim tomb-like light, her wide-strained eyes, 
white agonized countenance, and trembling, roseles? 
lips, made her look like one called back from death “ to 
speak of horrors.” 

“ Save him from madness,” she said, in forced and un- 
natural utterance. “ Save him from the remorse gnaw- 
ing at his heart. But do not, do not counsel him to give 
himself up.” 

“ Would it not be better you should tell me about it,” 
• said the curate, “ and save him the pain and excitement ?” 

“ I will do so, if he wishes it, not otherwise. — Come ; 
we must not stay longer. He can hardly bear me out of 
his sight. I will leave you for one moment in the lib- 
rary, and then come to you. If you should see my aunt, 
not a word of all this, please. All she knows is that he 
has had brain-fever and is recovering only very slowly. 
I have never given her even a hint of any thing worse. 
Indeed, honestly, Mr. Wingfold, I am not certain at all 


COMPELLED CONFIDENCE. 


355 


he did do what he will tell you. But there is his misery 
all the same. Do have pity on us, and don’t be hard 
upon the poor boy. He is but a boy — only twenty.” 

“ May God be to me as I am to him !” said Wingfold 
solemnly. 

Helen withdrew her entreating eyes, and let go his 
arm. They went up into the garden and into the house. 

Afterwards, Wingfold was astonished at his own calm- 
ness and decision in taking upon him — almost, as it 
were, dragging to him — this relation with Helen and 
her brother. But he had felt that not to do so would be 
to abandon Helen to her grief, and that for her sake he 
must not hesitate to encounter whatever might have to 
be encountered in doing so. 

Helen left him in the library, as she had said, and 
there he waited her return in a kind of stupor, unable to 
think, and feeling as if he were lost in a strange and 
anxious dream. 


CHAPTER EVIL 


WILLING CONFIDENCE. 

OME,” said Helen, re-entering, and the curate 
rose and followed her. 

The moment he turned the corner of the 
bed and saw the face on the pillow, he knew 
in his soul that Helen was right, and that that was no 
wicked youth who lay before him — one, however, who 
might well have been passion-driven. There was the 
dark complexion and the great soft yet wild eyes that 
came of tropical blood. Had not Helen so plainly 
spoken of her brother, however, he would have thought 
he saw before him a woman. The worn, troubled, ap- 
pealing /light that overflowed rather than shone from 
his eyes, went straight to the curate’s heart. 

Wingfold had had a brother, the only being in the 
world he had ever loved tenderly; he had died young, and 
a thin film of ice had since gathered over the well of his 
affections ; but now suddenly this ice broke and vanish- 
ed, and his heart yearned over the suffering youth. He 
had himself been crying to God, not seldom in sore 



WILLING CONFIDENCE. 


357 


trouble, and now, ere, as it seemed, he had himself been 
heard, here was a sad brother crying to him for help. 
Nor was this all: the reading of the gospel story had 
roused in his heart a strange, yet most natural longing 
after the face of that man of whom he read such lovely 
things, and thence, unknown to himself, had come a 
reverence and a love for his kind, which now first sprung 
awake to his consciousness in the feeling that drew him 
towards Leopold. 

Softly he approached the bed, his face full of tender- 
ness and strong pity. The lad, weak with protracted 
illness and mental tortures, gave one look in his face, 
and stretched out his arms to him. How could the 
curate give him but a hand ? He put his arms round 
him as if he had been a child. 

“ I knew you would come,” sobbed Lingard. 

“ What else could I do but come ?” returned Wingfold. 

“ I have seen you somewhere before,” said Lingard 
“ — in one of my dreams, I suppose ” 

Then, sinking his voice to a whisper, he added : 

“ Do you know you came in close behind /ler f She 
looked round and saw you, and vanished !” 

Wingfold did not even try to guess at his meaning. 

“ Hush, my dear fellow,” he said, “ I must not let you 
talk wildly, or the doctor might forbid my seeing you.” 

I am not talking a bit wildly,” returned Leopold. 
“ I am as quiet as a mountain-top. Ah ! when I am wild 
—if you saw me then, you might say so !” 

Wingfold sat down on the side of the bed, and took the 
thin, hot hand next him in his own firm, cool one. 


358 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Come now,” he said, “ tell me all about it. Or shall 
your sister tell me ? — Come here, please. Miss Lingard.” 

“ No, no !” cried Leopold hastily ; “ I will tell you 
myself. My poor sister could not bear to tell it you. It 
would kill her. — But how am I to know you will not get 
up and walk out the moment you have a glimpse of what 
is coming 

“ I would as soon leave a child burning in the fire and 
go out and shut the door,” said Wingfold. 

“ You can go now, Helen.” said Lingard very qui- 
etly. “ Why should you be tortured over again ? You 
needn’t mind leaving me. Mr. Wingfold will take care 
of me.” ' 

Helen left the room, with one anxious look at her 
brother as she went. 

Without a moment’s further delay, Leopold began, 
and in wonderfully direct and unbroken narrative, told 
the sad evil tale as he had formerly told it to his sister, 
only more consecutively and quietly. Possibly his 
anxiety as to how the listener would receive it, served, 
by dividing him between two emotions, to keep the re- 
uttered tale from overpowering him with freshened 
vividness. All the time, he kept watching Wingfold’s 
face, the expressions of which the curate felt those eyes 
were reading like a book. He was so well prepared 
however, that no expression of surprise, no reflex of its 
ghastfulness met Leopold’s gaze, and he went on to the 
end without a pause even. When he had finished, both 
sat silent, looking in each other’s eyes, Wingfold’s 
beaming with compassion, and Lingard’s glimmering 


WILLING CONFIDENCE. 


359 


with doubtful, anxious inquiry and appeal. At length 
Wingfold said ; 

“ And what do you think I can do for you ?” 

“ I don’t know. I thought you could tell me something. 
I can not live like this ! If 1 had but thought before I 
did it, and killed myself instead of her ! It would have 
done so much better ! Of course I should be in hell 
now, but that would be all right, and this is all wrong. 
I have no right to be lying here and Emmeline in her 
grave. I know I deserve to be miserable forever and 
ever, and I don’t want not to be miserable — that is all 
right — but there is something in this wretchedness that 
I can not bear. Tell me something to make me able to 
endure my misery. That is what you can do for me. I 
don’t want to go mad. And what is worst of all, I have 
made my sister miserable, and I can’t bear to see it. She 
is wasting away with it. And besides I fancy she loves 
George Bascombe — and who would marry the sister of 
a murderer? And now she has begun to come to me 
again — in the daytime — I mean Emmeline ! — or I have 
begun to see her again — I don’t know which ; — perhaps 
she is always here, only I don’t always see her — and it 
don’t much matter which. Only if other people were to 
see her ! — While she is there, nothing could persuade me 
I do not see her, but afterwards I am not so sure that I 
did. And at night I keep dreaming the horrible thing 
over and over again ; and the agony is to think I shall 
never get rid of it, and never feel clean again. To be 
forever and ever a murderer and people not know it is 
more than I can bear,” 


CHAPTER LVIIL 


THE curate’s counsel. 

OT seeing yet what he had to say, but knowing 
that scintillation the smallest is light, the 
curate let the talk take its natural course, 
and said the next thing that came to him. 
do you feel when you think that you may yet 
be found out he asked. 

“ At first I was more afraid of that than of any thing 
else. Then after that danger seemed past, 1 was afraid 
of the life to come. That fear left me next, and now it 
is the thing itself that Is always haunting me. I often 
wish they would come and take me, and deliver me 
from myself. It would be a comfort to have it all 
known, and never need to start again. I think I could 
even bear to see her in the prison. If it would annihi- 
late the deed, or bring Emmeline back, I can not tell you 
how gladly I would be hanged. I would, indeed, Mr. 
Wingfold. I hope you will believe me, though I don’t 
deserve it.” 

“ I do believe you,” said the curate, and a silence fol- 
lowed. 



THE curate’s counsel. 


361 


“ There is but one thing I can say with confidence at 
this moment,” he resumed : “ it is, that 1 am your friend, 
and will stand by you. But the first part of friendship 
sometimes is to confess poverty, and I want to tell you 
that of the very things concerning which I ought to 
know most, I know least. I have but lately begun to 
feel after God, and I dare not say that I have found him, 
but I think I know now where to find him. And I do 
think, if we could find him, then we should find help. 
All I can do for you now is only to be near you, and 
talk to you, and pray to God for you, that so together 
we may wait for what light may come. — Does any 
thing ever look to you as if it would make you feel 
better ?’ 

“ I have no right to feel better or take comfort from 
any thing.” 

“ I am not sure about that. — Do you feel any better 
for having me come to see you ?” 

“ Oh yes ! indeed I do !” 

“ Well, there is no wrong in that, is there 

“I don’t know. It seems a sneaking kindoftning: 
sAehas got none of it. My sister makes excuses forme, 
but the moment I begin to listen to them I only feel 
the more horrid.” 

“ I have said nothing of that kind to you.” 

“ No, sir.” 

“ And yet you like to have me here ?” 

“ Yes, indeed, sir,” he answered earnestly. 

“And it does not make you think less of your 
crime 


362 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ No. It makes me feel it worse than ever to see you 
sitting there, a clean, strong, innocent man, and think 
what I might have been.” 

“ Then the comfort you get from me does you no 
harm, at least. If I were to find my company made you 
think with less hatred of your crime, I should go away 
that instant.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said Leopold humbly. “O sir!” 
he resumed after a little silence, “ to think that never 
more to all eternity shall I be able to think of myself as 
I used to think !” 

“ Perhaps you used to think too much of yourself,” 
returned the curate. “ For the greatest fool and rascal 
in creation there is yet a worse condition, and that is 
not to know it, but think himself a respectable man. As 
the event proves, though' you would doubtless have 
laughed at the idea, you were then capable of commit- 
ting a murder. I have come to see — at least, I think I 
have — that except a man has God dwelling in him, he 
may be, or may become, capable of any crime within the 
compass of human nature.” 

“ I don’t know any thing about God,” said Leopold. 
“ I dare say I thought I did before this happened — before 
I did it, I mean,” he added in correction, “ — but I know 
now that I don’t, and never did.” 

“ Ah ! Leopold,” said the curate, “ think, if my coming 
to you comforts you, what would it be to have Him who 
made you always with you !” 

“ Where would be the good ? I daresay he might for- 
give me, if I were to do this and that, but where would 


THE curate’s counsel. 


363 


be the good of it ? It would not take the thing off me 
one bit.” 

“ Ah ! now,” said Wingfold, “ I fear you are thinking 
a little about your own disgrace and not only of the bad 
you have done. Why should you not be ashamed ? 
Would you have the shame taken off you ? Nay ; you 
must humbly consent to bear it. Perhaps your shame 
is the hand of love washing the defilement from off you. 
Ah, let us keep our shame, and be made clean from the 
filth !” 

“ 1 don’t know that I understand you, sir. What do 
you mean by the defilement ? Is it not to have done 
the deed that is the defilement }” 

“ Is it not rather to have that in you, a part, or all but 
a part, of your being, that makes you capable of doing 
it } If you had resisted and conquered, you would have 
been clean from it ; and now, if you repent and God 
comes to you, you will yet be clean. Again I say, let us 
keep our shame and be made clean ! Shame is not de- 
filement, though a mean pride persuades men so. On 
the contrary, the man who is honestly ashamed has be- 
gun to be clean.” 

“ But what good would that do to Emmeline } It can 
not bring her up again to the bright world out of the 
dark grave.” 

“ Emmeline is not in the dark grave.” 

Where is she then ?” he said with a ghastly look. 

“ That I can not tell. I only know that, if there be a 
God, she is in his hands,” replied the curate. 

The youth gazed in his face and made no answer. 


364 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Wingfold saw that he had been wrong in trying to com- 
fort him with the thought of God dwelling in him. How 
was such a poor passionate creature to take that for a 
comfort ? How was he to understand or prize the idea, 
who had his spiritual nature so all undeveloped ? He 
would try another way. 

“ Shall I tell you what seems to me sometimes the 
one only thing 1 w’ant to help me out of all my difficul- 
ties ?” 

“ Yes, please, sir,” answered Leopold, as humbly as a 
child. 

“ I think sometimes, if I could but see Jesus for one 
moment, — ” 

“ Ah !” cried Leopold, and gave a great sigh. 

“ You would like to see him then, would you.^” 

“ O Mr. Wingfold !” 

“ What would you say to him if you saw him ?” 

“ I don’t know. I would fall down on my face and 
hold his feet lest he should go away from me.” 

“ Do you think then he could help you 

“Yes. He could make Emmeline alive again. He 
could destroy what I had done.” 

“ But still, as you say, the crime would remain.” 

“ But, as you say, he could pardon that, and make me 
that I would never, never sin again.” 

“ So you think the story about Jesus Christ is true 

“Yes. Don’t you said Leopold with an amazed, 
half-frightened look. 

“ Yes, indeed I do. — Then do you remember what he 
said to his disciples as he left them ; / am with you al- 


THE curate’s counsel. 


365 


ways unto the end of the world ? — If that be true, then he 
can hear you just as well now as ever he could. And 
when he was in the world, he said ; '*Co7ne untome, all ye 
that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give yo7i rest." 
It is rest you want, poor boy — not deliverance from 

danger or shame, but rest — such peace of mind as you 
had when you were a child. If he can not give you that 
I know not where or how it is to be had. Do not waste 
time in asking yourself how he can do it : that is for 
him to understand, not you — until it is done. Ask him 
to forgive you and make you clean and set things right 
for you. If he will not do it, then he is not the saviour 
of men, and was wrongly named Jesus.” 

The curate rose. Leopold had hid his face. When 
he looked again he was gone. 


CHAPTER LIX. 


SLEEP. 

S Wingfold came out of the room, which was 
near the stair, Helen rose from the top of it, 
where she had been sitting all the time he 
had been with her brother. He closed the 
door gently behind him, and stepped softly along the 
landing. A human soul in guilt and agony is an awful 
presence, but there was more than that in the hush of 
the curate ; he felt as if he had left the physician of 
souls behind him at the bedside ; that a human being 
lay on the rack of the truth, but at his head stood one 
who watched his throes with the throbs of such a human 
heart as never beat in any bosom but his own, and the 
executioners were angels of light. No wonder if with 
such a feeling in his breast Wingfold walked softly, and 
his face glistened ! He was not aware that the tears 
stood in his eyes, but Helen saw them. 

“ You know all !” she faltered. 

> 

“ I do. Will you let me out by the garden again } I 
wish to be alone.” 



SLEEP. 


367 


She led the way down the stair, and walked with him 
through the garden. Wingfold did not speak. 

“ You don’t think very badly of my poor brother, do 
you, Mr. Wingfold ?” said Helen meekly. 

“ It is a terrible fate,” he returned. “ — I think I never 
saw a lovelier disposition. — I do hope his mind will soon 
be more composed. I think he knows where alone he 
can find rest. — I am well aware how foolish that of which 
I speak seems to some minds, Miss Lingard ; but when 
a man is once overwhelmed in his own deeds, when they 
have turned into spectres to mock at him, when he 
loathes himself and turns with sickness from past, pre- 
sent, and future, I know but one choice left, and that is 
between the death your friend Mr. Bascombe preaches 
and the life preached by Jesus, the crucified Jew. Into 
the life I hope your brother will enter.” 

“ I am so glad you don’t hate him !” 

“ Hate him ! Who but a demon could hate him 

Helen lifted a grateful look from eyes that swam in 
tears. The terror of his possible, counsel for the mo- 
ment vanished. He could never tell him to give 
himself up ! 

“ But, as I told you, I am a poor scholar in these high 
matters,” resumed the curate, “and I want to bring Mr. 
Polwarth to see him.” 

“ The dwarf !” exclaimed Helen, shuddering at the re- 
membrance of what she had gone through at the cot- 
tage. 

“ Yes. ' That man’s soul is as grand and beautiful and 


368 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


patient as his body is insignificant and troubled. He is 
the wisest and best man I have ever known.” 

“ I must ask Leopold,” returned Helen, who, the better 
the man was represented, felt the more jealous and fear- 
ful of the advice he might give. Her love and her con- 
science were not yet at one with each other. 

They parted at the door from the garden, and she re- 
turned to the sick-room. 

She paused, hesitating to enter. All was still as the 
grave. She turned the handle softly and peeped in : 
could it be that Wingfold’s bearing had communicated to 
her mind a shadow of the awe with which he had left 
the place where perhaps a soul was being born again ? 
Leopold did not move. Terror laid hold of her heart. 
She stepped quickly in, and round the screen to the side 
of the bed. There, to her glad surprise, he lay fast 
asleep, with the tears not yet dried upon his face. Her 
heart swelled with some sense unknown before : was it 
rudimentary thankfulness to the Father of her spirit ? 

As she stood gazing with the look of a mother over 
her sick child, he lifted his eyelids and smiled a sad 
smile. 

“ When did you come into the room ?” he said. 

“ A minute ago,” she answered. 

“ I did not hear you,” he returned. 

“ No ; you were asleep.” 

“ Not I ! Mr. Wingfold is only just gone.” 

“ I have let him out on the meadow since.” 

Leopold started, looked half alarmed, and then said, 

“ Did God make me sleep, Helen 


SLEEP. 


369 


She did not answer. The light of a new hope in his 
eye, as if the dawn had begun at last to break over the 
dark mountains, was already reflected from her heart. 

“ O Helen !” he said, “ that is a good fellow — such a 
good fellow !” 

A pang of jealousy, the first she had ever felt, shot to 
her heart ; she had hitherto, since his trouble, been all 
in all to her Leopold ! Had the curate been a man she 
liked, she would not, perhaps, have minded it so much. 

“ You will be able to do without me now,” she said 
sadly. “ I never could understand taking to people at 
first sight!” 

“ Some people are made so, I suppose, Helen. I know 
I took to you at first sight ! I shall never forget the 
first time I saw you, when I came to this country a lone- 
ly little foreigner — and you a great beautiful lady, for 
such you seemed to me, though you have told me since 
you were only a great gawky girl — I know that could 
never have been — you ran to meet me, and took me in 
your arms and kissed me. I was as if I had crossed the 
sea of death and found paradise in your bosom ! I am 
not likely to forget you for Mr. Wingfold, good and 
kind and strong as he is 1 Even she could not make me 
forget you, Helen. But neither you nor I can do with- 
out Mr. Wingfold any more, I fancy. I wish you 
liked him better !— but you will in time. You see, he’s 
not one to pay young ladies compliments, as I have 
heard some parsons do ; and he may be a little 
no, not unpolished, not that— that’s not what I mean- 
but unornamental in his manners ! Only, you see- 


370 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Only, you see, Poldie,” interrupted Helen, with a 
smile, a rare thing between them, “ you know all about 
him, though you never saw him before.” 

“ That is true,” returned Leopold ; “ but then he came 
to me with his door open, and let me walk in. It doesn’t 
take long to know a man then. He hasn’t got a secret 
like us, Helen,” he added sadly. 

“ What did he say to you ?” 

“ Much that he said to you from the pulpit the other 
day, I should think.” 

Then she was right ! For all his hardness and want 
of sympathy, the curate had yet had regard to her en- 
treaties, and was not going to put any horrid notions 
about duty and self-sacrifice into the poor boy’s head ! 

“ He is coming again to-morrow,” added Leopold 
almost gleefully, “ and then perhaps he will tell me 
more, and help me on a bit.” 

“ Did he tell you he wants to bring a friend with 
him?” 

“ No.” 

“ I can’t see the good of taking more people into our 
confidence.” 

“ Why should he not do what he thinks best, Helen ? 
You don’t interfere with the doctor, why should you 
with him ? When a man is going to the bottom as fast 
as he can and another comes diving after him, it isn’t 
for me to say how he is to take hold of me. No, He- 
len ; when I trust, I trust out and out.” 

Helen sighed, thinking how ill that had worked with 
Emmeline. 


SLEEP. 


371 


Ever since George Bascombe had talked about the 
Polwarths that day they met them in the park, she had 
felt a kind of physical horror of them, as if they were 
some kind of unclean creature that ought not to be in 
existence at all. But when Leopold uttered himself 
thus, she felt that the current of events had seized her, 
and that she could only submit to be carried along. 


CHAPTER LX. 


DIVINE SERVICE. 

HE next day the curate called again on Leo^ 
pold. But Helen happened to be otherwise 
engaged for a few minutes, and Mrs. Ranis- 
horn to be in the sick-room when the servant 
brought his name. With her jealousy of Wingfold’s 
teaching, she would not have admitted him, but Lingard 
made such loud protest when he heard her say “ Not at 
home,” insisting on seeing him, that she had to give way 
and tell the maid to show him up. She had no notion, 
however, of leaving him alone in the room with the in- 
valid : who could tell what absurd and extravagant ideas 
he might not put into the boy’s head ! He might make 
him turn monk, or Socinian, or Latter-day-Saint, for what 
she knew ! So she sat, blocking up the sole small window 
in the youth’s dark dwelling that looked eastward, and 
damming back the tide of the dawn from his diseased and 
tormented soul. Little conversation was therefore pos^ 
sible. Still the face of his new friend was a comfort to 
Leopold, and ere he left him they had managed to fix an 



DIVINE SERVICE. 


373 


hour for next day, when they would not be thus 
foiled of their talk. 

That same afternoon Wingfold took the draper to 
see Polwarth. 

Rachel was lying on a sofa in the parlor — a poor little 
heap, looking more like a grave disturbed by efforts at 
a resurrection than a form informed with humanity. 
But she was cheerful and cordial, receiving Mr. Drew 
and accepting his sympathy most kindly. 

“ We’ll see what God will do for me,” she said in answer 
to a word from the curate. Her whole bearing, now as 
always, was that of one who perfectly trusted a supreme 
spirit unde'r whose influences lay even the rugged ma- 
terial of her deformed dwelling. 

Polwarth allowed Wingfold to help him in getting 
tea, and the conversation, as will be the case where all 
are in earnest, quickly found the right channel. 

It is not often in real life that such conversations occur. 
Generally, in any talk worth calling conversation, every 
man has some point to maintain, and his object is to jus- 
tify his own thesis and disprove his neighbor’s. I will 
allow that he may primarily have adopted his thesis be- 
cause of some sign of truth in it, but his mode of sup- 
porting it is generally such as to block up every cranny 
in his soul at which more truth might enter. In the 
present case, unusual as it is for so many as three truth- 
loving men to come thus together on the face of this 
planet, here were three simply set on uttering truth they 
had seen, and gaining sight of truth as yet veiled from 
them. 


374 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


I shall attempt only a general impression of the re- 
sult of their evening’s intercourse, partly recording the 
utterances of Polwarth. 

“ I have been trying hard to follow you, Mr. Pol- 
warth,” said the draper, after his host had for a while had 
the talk to himself, “ but I can not get hold of your re- 
marks. One moment! think I have got the end of the 
clue, and the next find myself abroad again. Would 
you tell me what you mean by divine service } for I think 
you must use the phrase in some different sense from 
what I have been accustomed to.” 

“Ah! I ought to remember,” said Polwarth, “that 
what has grown familiar to my mind from much solita- 
ry thinking, may not at once show itself to another 
when presented in the forms of a foreign individuality. 
I ought to have premised that, when I use the phrase 
divine service, I mean nothing whatever belonging to the 
church or its observances. I mean by it what it ought 
to mean — the serving of God ; the doing of something 
for God. Shall I make of the church, in my foolish im- 
aginations, a temple of idolatrous worship by supposing 
that it is for the sake of supplying some need that God 
has, or of gratifying some taste in him, that I there listen 
to his word, say prayers to him, and sing his praises ? 
Shall I be such a dull mule in the presence of the living 
Truth Or, to use a homely simile, shall I be as the good 
boy of the nursery-rhyme, who, seated in his corner of 
selfish complacency, regards the eating of his pie as a 
virtuous action, enjoys the contemplation of it, and 
thinks what a pleasing object he thus makes of himself 


DIVINE SERVICE. 


375 


to his parents ? Shall I, to take a step farther, degrade 
the sanctity of the closet, hallowed in the words of Jesus, 
by shutting its door in the vain fancy of there doing 
something that God requires of me as a sacred observance? 
Shall I foolishly imagine that to put in exercise the 
highest and loveliest, the most entrancing privilege of 
existence, that of pouring forth my whole heart into 
the heart of him who \?>' accountable for me, who hath 
glorified me with his own image — in my soul, gentle- 
men, sadly disfigured as it is in my body ! — shall I say 
that that is to do any thing for God ? Was I serving my 
father when I ate the dinner he provided for me ? Am I 
serving my God when I eat his bread and drink his 
wine ?” 

“ But,” said Drew, “ is not God pleased that a man 
should pour out his soul to him 

“ Yes, doubtless ; but what would you think of a child 
who said, ‘ I am very useful to my father, for when I 
ask him for any thing, or tell him I love him, it gives 
him, oh ! such pleasure ’ ?” 

“ I should say he was an unendurable prig. Better 
he had to be whipped for stealing !” said the curate. 

“There would be more hope of his future,” returned 
Polwarth. “ Is the child,” he continued, “ who sits by his 
father’s knee and looks up into his father’s face, serving 
that father because the heart of the father delights to 
look down upon his child ? And shall the moment of 
my deepest repose and bliss, the moment when I serve 
myself with the very life of the universe, be called a 
serving of my God ? It is communion with God ; he 


376 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


holds it with me, else never could I hold it with him. 
I am as the foam-froth upon his infinite ocean, but of 
the water of the ocean is the bubble on its waves.” 

Not the eyes only, but the whole face of the man, 
which had grown of a pure, semi-transparent white- 
ness, appeared to Wingfold to emit light. 

“When my child would serve me,” he went on, “he 
spies out some need I have, springs from his seat at my 
knee, finds that which will meet my necessity, and 
is my eager, happy servant, of consequence in his own 
eyes inasmuch as he has done something for his 
father. His seat by my knee is love, delight, well-be- 
ing, peace — not service, however pleasing in my eyes. 

‘ Why do you seat yourself at my knee, my son ?’ ‘ To 

please you, father.’ ‘Nay, then, my son ! go from me, 
and come again when it shall be to please thyself.’ — 

‘ Why do you cling to my chair, my daughter.?’ ‘Be- 
cause I want to be near you, father. It makes me so 
happy !’ ‘ Come nearer still — come to my bosom, my 

child, and be yet happier.’— Talk not of public worship 
as divine service : it is a mockery. Search the proph- 
ets, and you will find the observances, fasts and sacrifices 
and solemn feasts, of the temple by them regarded with 
loathing and scorn just because by the people they were 
regarded as divine service.” 

“ But,” said Mr. Drew, while Wingfold turned towards 
him with some anxiety lest he should break the mood 
of the little prophet, “ I can’t help thinking I have 
you ; for how are poor creatures like us— weak, blunder- 
ing creatures, sometimes most awkward when best-inten- 


DIVINE SERVICE. 


377 


tioned — how are we to minister to a perfect God — perfect 
in wisdom, strength, and every thing— of whom Paul says 
that he is not worshipped with men’s hands as though he 
needed anything ? I can not help thinking that you are 
fighting merely with a word. Certainly, if the phrase 
ever was used in that sense, there is no meaning of the 
kind attached to it now : it stands merely for the forms 
of public worship.” 

“ Were there no such thing as Divine Service in the true 
sense of the word, then indeed it would scarcely be worth 
while to quarrel with its misapplication. But I assert that 
true and genuine service may be rendered to the living 
God ; and for the development of the divine nature in 
man, it is necessary that he should do something for God. 
Nor is it hard to discover how ; for God is in every 
creature that he has made, and in their needs he is needy, 
and in all their afflictions he is afflicted. Therefore 
Jesus says that whatever is done to one of his little ones 
is done to him. And if the soul of a man be the temple 
of the Spirit, then is the place of that man’s labor — his 
shop, his counting-house, his laboratory — the temple of 
Jesus Christ, where the spirit of the man is incarnate in 
work. Mr. Drew !” — here the gate-keeper stood up 
and held out both his hands, palms upward, towards 
the draper on the other side of the table — “ Mr. Drew ! 
your shop is the temple of your service where the Lord 
Christ, the only image of the Father, is, or ought to be, 
throned ; your counter is, or ought to be, his altar ; and 
every thing thereon laid, with intent of doing as well 
as you can for your neighbor, in the name of man 


378 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Christ Jesus, is a true sacrifice offered to him, a service 
done to the eternal creating Love of the universe.” 

The little prophet’s head as he stood did not reach 
the level of the draper’s as he sat, but at this Drew 
dropped his head on his hands upon the table as if 
bowed down by* a weight of thought and feeling and 
worship. 

“ I say not,” Polwarth went on, “ that so doing you 
will grow a rich man, but I say that by so doing you 
will be saved from growing too rich, and that you will be 
a fellow-worker with God for the salvation of his world.” 

“ I must live ; I can not give my goods away !” mur- 
mured Mr. Drew thinkingly, as one that sought en- 
lightenment. 

“ That would be to go direct against the order 
of his world,” said Polwarth. “ No ; a harder task is 
yours, Mr. Drew — to make your business a gain to 
you, and at the same time to be not only what is com- 
monly counted just, but interested in, and careful of, and 
caring for your neighbor, as a servant of the God of 
bounty who giveth to all men liberally. Your calling is 
to do the best for your neighbor that you reasonably 
can.” 

“ But who is to fix what is reasonable ?” asked Drew. 

“The man himself, thinking in the presence of Jesus 
Christ. There is a holy moderation which is of God.” 

“There won’t be many fortunes — great fortunes — 
made after that rule, Mr. Polwarth,” 

“ Very few,” 


DIVINE SERVICE. 


379 


“ Then do you say that no great fortunes have been 
righteously made ?” 

“If righteously means after the fashion of Jesus Christ — 
But I will not judge : that is for the God-enlightened 
conscience of the man himself to do, not for his neigh- 
bor’s. Why should I be judged by another’s man's 
conscience ? But you see, Mr. Drew — and this is what 
I was driving at — you have it in your power to serve 
God through the needs of his children all the working 
day, from morning to night, so long as there is a cus- 
tomer in your shop.” 

“ I do think you are right, sir,” said the linen-draper. 
“ I had a glimpse of the same thing the other night my- 
self. And yet it seems as if you spoke of a purely ideal 
state — one that could not be realized in this world.” 

“ Purely ideal or not, one thing is certain : it will 
never be reached by one who is so indifferent to it as to 
believe it impossible. Whether it may be reached in 
this world or not, that is a question of no consequence ; 
whether a man has begun to reach after it is of the utmost 
awfulness of import. And should it be ideal, which I 
doubt, what else than the ideal have the followers of the 
ideal man to do with 

“ Can a man reach any thing ideal before he has God 
dwelling in him, filling every cranny of his soul ?” 
asked the curate, with shining eyes. 

“ Nothing, I do most solemnly believe,” answered Pol- 
warth. “It weighs on me heavily sometimes,” he re- 
sumed, after a pause, “ to think how far all but a few are 
from being able even to entertain the idea of the indwell- 


380 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ing in them of the original power of their life. True, God 
is in every man, else how could he live the life he does 
live } But that life God keeps alive for the hour when he 
shall inform the will, the aspiration, the imagination of 
the man. When the man throws wide his door to the Fa^ 
ther of his spirit, when his individual being is thus sup- 
plemented — to use a poor, miserable word — with the in- 
dividuality that originated it, then is the man a whole, 
healthy, complete existence. Then indeed, and then 
only, will he do no wrong, think no wrong, love perfect- 
ly, and be right merry. Then will he scarce think of 
praying, because God is in every thought and enters 
anew with every sensation. Then he will forgive and 
endure, and pour out his soul for the beloved who yet 
grope their way in doubt and passion. Then every man 
will be dear and precious to him, even the worst ; for 
in him also lies an unknown yearning after the same 
peace wherein he rests and loves.” 

He sat down suddenW and a deep silence filled the 


room. 


CHAPTER LXI. 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 

NCLE,” said Rachel, “may I read your vision 
of the shops in heaven ?” 

“ Oh! no, Rachel. You are not able to 
read to-night,” said her uncle deprecatingly 
“ I think I am, uncle. I should like to try. It will let 
the gentlemen see what you would think an ideal state of 
things. — It is something, Mr. Wingfold, my uncle once 
dictated to me, and I wrote down just as he said it. He 
can always do better dictating than writing, but this 
time he was so ill with asthma that he could not talk 
much faster than I could write ; and yet to be so ill I 
never saw him show so little suffering ; his thinking 
seemed to make him forget it. — Mayn’t I read it, uncle 1 
I know the gentlemen would like to hear it.” 

“ That we should,” said both the men at once. 

“ I will fetch it to you, then,” said Polwarth, “ if you 
will tell me where to find it.” , 

Rachel gave him the needful directions, and presently 
he brought a few sheets of paper and handed them to her. 




382 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ This is no dream, Mr. Wingfold,” he said. “It is some- 
thing I had thought fairly out before I began to dictate 
it. But the only fit form I could find for it was that of a 
vision — like the Vision of Mirza, you know. — Now read, 
Rachel, and I will hold my tongue.” 

After a little arranging of the sheets, Rachel began. 
She read not without difficulty, but her pleasure in 
what she read helped her through. 

“ ‘ “ And now,” said my guide to me, “ I will bring thee 
to a city of the righteous, and show thee how they buy and 
sell in this the kingdom of heaven.’’ So we journeyed a 
day and another day and half a day, and I was weary ere 
we arrived thither. But when I saw the loveliness of the 
place and drew in the healing air thereof, my weariness 
vanished as a dream of the night, and I said. It is well, 
I may not now speak of the houses and the dress and the 
customs of the dwellers therein, save what may belong 
to the buying and selling of which 1 have spoken. 
Gladly would I tell of the streams that went, some 
noiselessly gliding, others gurgling, some sweeping, 
some rushing and roaring, through every street, all is- 
suing from one right plenteous fountain in the middle 
of the city, so that the ear was forever filled with the 
sound of many waters all the day, ceasing when the 
night came that silence might have its perfect work upon 
the soul. Gladly, too, would I tell of the trees and 
flowers and grass that grew in every street along the 
banks of the rivers. But 1 must withhold. 

“‘After I had, I know not for how long, refreshed 
my soul with what it was thus given me to enjoy — for 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 


383 


in all that country there is no such thing as haste, no 
darting from one thing to another, but a calm, eternal 
progress in which unto the day the good thereof is suffi- 
cient — one great noon-day my conductor led me into a 
large place such as we would call a shop here, although 
the arrangements were different, and an air of stateliness 
dwelt in and around the house. It was filled with the 
loveliest silken and woollen stuffs, of all kinds and col- 
ors, a thousand delights to the eye — and to the 
thought also, for here was endless harmony and no dis- 
cord. 

“ ‘ I stood in the midst, and my guide stood by me in 
silence ; for all the time I was in the country he seldom 
spoke to me save when first I asked of him, and yet he 
never showed any weariness, and often a half-smile 
would dwell for a moment upon his countenance. 

“ ‘ And first I watched the faces of them that sold ; ^nd 
I could read therein — for be it understood that, accord- 
ing to the degree of his own capacity, a man there could 
perfectly read the countenance of every neighbor; that 
is, except it expressed something that was not in himself 
— I could read in them nothing of eagerness, but only 
the calm of a concentrated ministration. ■ There was no 
seeking there, but a strength of giving, a business-like 
earnestness to supply lack, enlivened by no haste and 
dulled by no weariness, brightened ever by the reflected 
content of those who found their wants supplied. As soon 
as one buyer was contented they turned graciously to 
another, and gave ear until they perfectly understood 
with what object he had come to seek their aid. Nor 


3^4 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


did their countenances change utterly as they turned 
away, for upon them lingered the satisfaction as of one 
who hath had a success, and by degrees melted into the 
supervening content. 

“ ‘ Then I turned to watch the countenances of them 
that bought. And there in like manner I saw no cupidity 
and no meanness. They spake humbly, yet not because 
they sought a favor, but because they were humble ; for 
with their humility was mingled the confidence of receiv- 
ing that they sought. And truly it was a pleasure to see 
how every one knew what his desire was, making his 
choice readily and with decision. I perceived also that 
every one spoke not merely respectfully, but gratefully, 
to him who served him. And at meeting and parting, such 
kindly though brief greetings passed as made me won- 
der whether every inhabitant of such a mighty city could 
know every other that dwelt therein. But I soon saw 
that it came not of individual knowledge, but of univer- 
sal faith and all-embracing love. 

“ ‘And as I stood and watched, suddenly it came into 
my mind that I had never yet seen the coin of the coun- 
try, and thereupon I kept my eyes upon a certain woman 
who bought silk, that when she paid for the same I might 
see the money. But that which she had largely bought, 
she took in her arms and carried away, and paid not. 
Therefore I turned to watch another, who bought for a 
long journey, but when he carried away what he bought 
neither did he pay any money. And 1 said to myself 

These are well-known persons, to whom it is more con- 
venient to pay at a certain season and I turned to a 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 


385 


third, who bought much fine linen. But behold ! he paid 
not ! Then I began to observe again those that sold ; 
whereupon I thought with myself, “ How good must be 
the air of this land for the remembrance of things ! for 
these men write down nothing to keep on record the ^ 
moneys men owe them on all sides.” And I looked and 
looked again and yet again, and stood long watching ; 
but so it was throughout the whole place, which 
thronged and buzzed and swarmed like the busiest 
of beehives — no man paid, and no man had a book 
wherein to write that which the other owed ! 

“ ‘ Then I turned to my guide and said, '• How lovely is 
honesty ! and truly from what a labor itabsolveth men ! 
for here I see every man keepeth in his mind his own 
debts and not the debts of others, so that time is not 
spent in the paying of small sums, neither in the keeping 
of account of such ; but he that buyeth counteth up, 
and doubtless, when the day of reckoning arrives, each 
cometh and casteth the money he oweth into the mer- 
chant’s coffer, and both are satisfied.” 

“ ‘Then my conductor smiled, and said, “Watch yet 
awhile.” 

“ ‘And I did as he said unto me, and stood and watched. 
But the same thing went on everywhere ; and I said to 
myself, “Loll see nothing new !” Suddenly, at my side, 
a man dropped upon his knees and bowed his head to 
the ground. And those that stood nigh him dropped 
also upon their knees, and there arose a sound as of soft 
thunder ; and lo ! every one in the place had dropped 
upon his knees and spread his hands out before him. 


386 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Every voice and every noise was hushed, every move- 
ment had ceased, and I and my guide alone were left 
standing. 

“‘Then I whispered in his ear, “It is the hour ot 
prayer: shall we not kneel also?” And my guide 
answered, “ No man in this city kneeleth because other/ 
do, and no man is judged if he kneeleth not. If tho>^ 
hast any grief or pain upon thee, then kneel; if not 
then love God in thy heart and be thankful, and knee' 
when thou goest into thy chamber.” Then said I, 
wall not kneel, but will watch and see.” “ It is well,' 
said my guide ; and I stood. 

“ ‘ For certain moments all was utter stillness — ever) 
man and woman kneeling, with hands outstretched, save 
him who had first kneeled, and his hands hung by his 
sides and his head was still bowed to the earth. At 
length he rose up, and lo ! his face was wet with tears; 
and all the people rose also, with a noise throughout the 
place ; and the man made a low obeisance to them that 
were nigh him, the which they returned with equal rev- 
erence, and then, with downcast eyes, he walked slowly 
from the shop. The moment he was gone, the business 
of the place, without a word of remark on any side con- 
cerning what had passed, began again as before. People 
came and went, some more eager and outward, some 
more staid and inward, but all contented and cheerful. At 
length a bell somewhere rang sweet and shrill, and after 
that no one entered the place, and what was in progress 
began to be led to a decorous conclusion. In three or 
four minutes the floor was empty, and the people also of 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 


387 


the shop had gone, each about his own affairs, without 
shutting door or window. 

“ ‘ I went out last with my guide, and we seated 
ourselves under a tree of the willow kind on the bank 
of one of the quieter streams, and straightway I 
began to question him. “Tell me, sir,” I said, “the 
purport of what I have seen ; for not yet have I 
understood how these happy people do their busi- 
ness and pass from hand to hand not a single 
coin.” And he answered, “ Where greed and ambition 
and self-love rule, money must be ; where there is 
neither greed nor ambition nor self-rule, money is 
needless.” And I asked, “Is it then by the same 
ancient mode of barter that they go about their affairs ? 
truly I saw no exchange of any sort.” “ Bethink thee,” 
said my guide, “if thou hadst gone into any other shop 
throughout the whole city, thou wouldst have seen the 
same thing.” “ I see not how that should make the 
matter plainer to me,” I answered. “Where neither 
greed nor ambition nor selfishness reigneth,” said my 
guide, “there need and desire have free scope, for they 
work no evil.” “ But even now I understand you not, 
sir,” I said. “ Hear me, then,” answered my guide, “ for 
I will speak to thee more plainly. Wherefore do men 
take money in their hands when they go where things 
are ?” “ Because they may not have the things without 
giving the money.” “And where they may have things 
without giving money, there they take no money 
in their hands “Truly no, sir, if there be such 
a place.” “Then such a place is this, and so is 


388 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


it here.” "‘But how can men give of their goods 
and receive naught in return?” “By receiving 
everything in return. Tell me,” said my guide, 
why do men take money for their goods?” “That 
they may have wherewithal to go and buy other 
things which they need for themselves.” “ But if they 
also may go to this place or that place where the things 
are the which they need, and receive of those things with- 
out money and without price, is there then good cause 
why they should take money in their hands ?” “Truly 
no,” I answered ; “ and I begin, methinks, to see how the 
affair goeth. Yet a^re there some things still whereupon 
I would gladly be resolved. And first of all, how com- 
eth it that men are moved to provide these and those 
goods for the supply of the wants of their neighbors 
when they are drawn thereto by no want in themselves 
and no advantage to themselves?” “Thou reasonest,’’ 
said my guide, “ as one of thine own degree, who to the 
eyes of the full-born ever look like chrysalids, closed 
round in a web of their own weaving ; and who shall blame 
thee until thou thyself shinest within thyself? Under- 
stand that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a 
man in this kingdom to undertake this or that. The thing 
that alone advantageth a man here is the thing which 
doth without thought unto that advantage. To your 
world, this world goeth by contraries. The man here that 
doeth most service, that aideth others the most to the ob- 
taining of their honest desires, is the man who standeth 
highest with the Lord of the place, and his reward and 
honor is to be enabled to the spending of himself yet 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 


389 


more for the good of his fellows. There goeth a rumor 
amongst us even now that one shall erelong be ripe for 
the carrying of a message from the King to the spirits that 
are in prison. Thinkest thou it is a less potent stirring 
up of thought and energy to desire and seek and find the 
things that will please the eye and cheer the brain and 
gladden the heart of the people of this great city, so as 
when one prayeth, Give ?ne, friend, of thy loaves, a man 
may answer. Take of them, friend, as many as thoit need^ 
est — is that, I say, an incentive to diligence less potent 
than the desire to hoard or to excel ? Is it not to share 
the bliss of God who hoardeth nothing, but ever giveth 
liberally } The joy of a man here is to enable another to 
lay hold upon that which is of his own kind and be glad 
and grow thereby — doctrine strange and unbelievable to 
the man in whom the well of life is yet sealed. Never 
have they been many at a time in the old world who 
could thus enter into the joy of their Lord. And yet, if 
thou bethink thee, thou wilt perceive that such bliss is 
not unknown amongst thy fellows. Knowest thou no 
musician who would find it joy enough for a night to 
scale the tower of a hundred bells, and send the great me- 
teors of music-light flying over the care-tortured city? 
Would every one even of thy half-created race reason 
with himself and say, ‘Truly it is in the night, and no one 
can see who it is that ministereth ; the sounds alone will 
go forth nor bear my image ; I shall reap no honor ; I 
will not rise and go ’ ? Thou knowest, I say, some in thy 
world who would not speak thus in their hearts, but 
would willingly consent to be as nothing, so to give life 


390 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


to their fellows. In this city so is it with all — in shop 
or workshop, in study or theatre, all seek to spend 
and be spent for the lovely all.” And I said, “ One thing 
tell me, sir ; how much a man may have for the asking. ” 
“ What he will — that is, what he can well use.” “ Who 
then shall be the judge thereof ?” “Who but the man 
himself ?” “ What if he should turn to greed, and begin 

to hoard and spare ?” “ Sawest thou not the man this day 
because of whom all business ceased for a time ? To that 
man had come a thought of accumulation instead of 
growth, and he dropped upon his knees in shame and 
terror. And thou sawest how all business ceased, and 
straightway that of the shop was made what below they 
call a church ; for every one hastened to the poor 
man’s help, the air was filled with praying breath, and 
the atmosphere of God-loving souls was around him ; the 
foul thought fled, and the man went forth glad and hum- 
ble, and to-morrow he will return for that which he need- 
eth. If thou shouldst be present then, thou wilt see him 
more tenderly ministered unto than all the rest.” 
“ And if such a man prayed not ?” “ If such a man slept 

ere he repented, he would wake with hatred in his heart 
toward the city and every one therein, and would 
straightway flee into the wilderness. And the angel of 
the Lord would go out after him and smite him with 
a w^ord, and he would vanish from amongst us, and 
his life would be the life of one of those least of liv- 
ing things that are in your world born of the water ; and 
there must he grow up again, crawling through the chan- 
nels of thousand-folded difference, from animal to ani- 


A SHOP IN HEAVEN. 


391 


mal, until at length a human brain be given him, and 
after generations he become once again capable of being 
born of the spirit into the kingdom of liberty. Then 
shall all his past life open upon him, and in shame and 
dismay will he repent a thousand-fold, and will sin no 
more. Such, at least, are the thoughts of our wise men 
upon the matter ; but truly we know not.” “ It is good,” 
I said. “ But how are men guided as to what lies to them 
to provide for the general good ?” “Every man doeth 
what thing he can, and the more his labor is desired 
the more he rejoices.” “ If a man should desire that he 
could nowhere find in the city?” •‘Then he would 
straightway do his endeavor to provide that thing for 
all in the city who might after him desire the same.” 
“Now, sir, methinks I know and understand,” I answer- 
ed. And we rose and went further.’ ” 

“ I think that he !” said the curate, breaking the 
silence that followed when Rachel ceased. 

“ Not in this world,” said the draper. 

“ To doubt that it be,” said the gate-keeper, 

“ would be to doubt whether the kingdom of heaven is 
a chimera or a divine idea.” 


CHAPTER LXIL 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 



HE morning after Wingfold’s second visit 
Lingard — much to his sister’s surprise, partly 
to her pleasure, and somewhat to her conster- 
nation — asked for his clothes : he wanted to 
get up. So little energy had he hitherto shown, so weak 
was he, and so frequent had been the symptoms of re- 
turning fever, that the doctor had not yet thought of ad- 
vising more than an hour’s sitting while his bed was 
made comfortable. And Helen had felt that she had 
him, if not safe, yet safer in bed than he could be else- 
M’^here. 

His wish to rise was a sign that he was getting 
better. But could she wish him to get better, see- 
ing every hour threatened to be an hour of torture ? On 
the other hand, she could not but hope that, for the last 
day or so, his mind had been a little more at ease. As- 
suredly the light in his eye was less troubled : perhaps 
he saw prospect of such mental quiet as might render 
life endurable. 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


393 


He declined assistance, and Helen, having got him 
every thing he required, left the room to wait within 
hearing. It took him a long time to dress, but he had 
resolved to do it himself, and at length called Helen. 

She found he looked worse in his clothes — fearfully 
worn and white. Ah ! what a sad ghost he was of his 
former sunny self! Helen turned her eyes from him that 
he might not see how changed she thought him, and 
there were the trees in the garden, and the meadows and 
the park beyond, bathing in the strength of the sun be- 
twixt the blue sky and the green earth ! “ What a hid- 

eous world it is !” she said to herself. She was not yet 
persuaded, like her cousin, that it was the best possible 
world — only that, unfortunately, not much was possible 
in worlds. 

“ Will you get me something, Helen ?” he said. “ Mr. 
Wingfold will be here, and 2 want to be able to talk to 
him.” 

It was the first time he had asked for food, though 
he had seldom refused to take what she brought 
him. She made him lie on the couch, and gave orders 
that if Mr. Wingfold called, he should be shown up 
at once. Leopold’s face brightened ; he actually looked 
pleased when his soup came. When Wingfold was an- 
nounced, he grew for a moment radiant. 

Helen received the curate respectfully, but not very 
cordially : she could not make Leopold’s face shine ! 

“ Would your brother like to see Mr. Polwarth 
asked the curate rather abruptly. 

“ I will see any one you would like me to see, Mr. 


394 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Wingfold,” answered Lingard for himself, with a deci- 
sion that strongly indicated returning strength. 

“ But, Leopold, you know that it is hardly to be de- 
sired,” suggested Helen, “ that more persons — ” 

“ I don’t know that,” interrupted Leopold, with 
strange expression. 

'• Perhaps I had better tell you, Miss Lingard,” said the 
curate, “that it was Mr, Polwarth who found the thing 
I gave you. After your visit, he could not fail to put 
things together; and had he been a common man, 
I should have judged it prudent to tell him for the sak^ 
of secrecy what I have told him for the sake of counsel. 
I repeat in your brother’s hearing what I said to you, 
that he is the wisest and best man I have ever known. 
I left him in the meadow at the foot of the garden. He 
is suffering to-day, and I wanted to save him the longer 
walk. If you will allow me, I will go and bring him in.” 

“ Do,” said Leopold. “ Think, Helen ! If he is the 
wisest and best man Mr.Wingfold ever knew ! Tell him 
where to find the key.” 

“ I will go myself,’’ she said, with a yielding to the in- 
evitable. 

When she opened the door, there was the little man 
seated, a few yards off, on the grass. He had plucked a 
cowslip, and was looking into it so intently that he 
neither heard nor saw her. 

“ Mr. Polwarth !” said Helen. 

He lifted his eyes, rose, and, taking off his hat, said, 
with a smile, 

I was looking into the cowslip for the spots which 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


395 


the fairy in the Midsummer Night’s Dream calls rubies. 
How is your brother, Miss Lingard ?” 

Helen answered with cold politeness, and led the way 
up the garden with considerably more stateliness of de- 
meanor than was necessary. 

When he followed her into the room, 

“This is Mr. Polwarth, Leopold,” said the curate, ris- 
ing respectfully. “ You may speak to him as freely as 
to me, and he is far more able to give you counsel than 
I am.” 

“ Would you mind shaking hands with me, Mr. Pol- 
warth ?” said Leopold, holding out his shadowy hand. 

Polwarth took it, with the kindest of smiles, and held 
it a moment in his. 

“ You think me an odd-looking creature, don’t you ?” 
he said ; “ but just because God made me so I have 
been compelled to think about things I might have 
otherwise have forgotten, and that is why Mr. Wingfold 
would have me come to see you.” 

The curate placed a chair for him, and the gate-keeper 
sat down. Helen seated herself a little way off in the 
window, pretending-^hardl)' more — to hem a handker- 
chief. Leopold’s big eyes went wandering from one to 
the other of the two men. 

“ What a horrible world it is !” was the thought that 
kept humming on like an evil insect in Helen’s heart. 

“ I am sorry to see you suffer so much,” said Leopold 
kindly, for he heard the labored breath of the little 
man, and saw the heaving of his chest. 

“ It does not greatly trouble me,” returned Polwarth.’ 


396 THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


"It is not my fault, you see,” he added, with a smile; 
"at least I don’t think it is.” 

" You are happy to suffer without fault,” said Leopold. 
"It is because it is just that my punishment seems great- 
er than I can bear.” 

“ You need God’s forgiveness in your soul.” 

" I don’t see how that should do any thing for me.” 

"I do not mean it would take away your suffering ; 
but it would make you able to bear it. It would be 
fresh life in you.” 

" I can’t see why it should. I can’t feel that I have 
wronged God. I have been trying to feel it, Mr. Wing- 
fold, ever since you talked to me. But I don’t know 
God, and I only feel what I have done to Emmeline. If I 
said to God, Pardon me, and he said to me, I do pardon 
you, I should feel just the same. What could that do to set 
any thing right that I have set wrong } I am what I am 
and what I ever shall be, and the injury which came 
from me cleaves fast to her, and is my wrong wherever 
she is.” 

He hid his face in his hands. 

" What use can it be to torture the poor boy so ?’* 
said Helen to herself. 

The two men sat silent. Then Polwarth said, 

" I doubt if there is any use in trying to feel. And no 
amount of trying could enable you to imagine what 
God’s forgiveness is like to those that have it in them. 
Tell me something more you do feel, Mr. Lingard.” 

" I feel that I could kill myself to bring her back to 
life.” 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


397 


“ That is, you v/ould kindly make amends for the 
wrong you have done her.” 

“ I would give my life, my soul, to do it.” 

“ And there is nothing you can do for it ?” 

Helen began to tremble. 

“ What is there that can be done ?” answered Leo- 
pold. " It does seem hard that a man should be made 
capable of doing things that he is not made capable of 
undoing again.” 

“ It is indeed a terrible thought ! And even the small- 
est wrong is, perhaps, too awful a thing for created 
being ever to set right again.” 

“ You mean it takes God to do that }” 

» I do.” 

“ I don’t see how he could ever set some things right.” 

“ He would not be God if he could not or would not 
do for his creature what that creature can not do for 
himself, and must have done for him or lose his life.” 

“ Then he isn’t God, for he can’t help me.” 

“ Because you don’t see what can be done you say 
God can do nothing — which is as much as to say there 
can not be more within his scope than there is within 
yours 1 One thing is clear : that if he saw no more than 
lies within your ken, he could not be God. The very 
impossibility you see in the thing points to the region 
wherein God works.” 

“ I don t quite understand you. But it don’t matter. 
It’s all a horrible mess. I wish I were dead.” 

My dear sir, is it reasonable that because a being so 
capable ot going wrong finds himself incapable of set- 


398 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ting right, he should judge it useless to cry to that Being 
who called him into being to come to his aid, and that in 
the face of the story — if it be but an old legend, worn 
and disfigured — that he took upon himself our sins ?” 
Leopold hung his head. 

“ God needs no making up to him,” the gate-keeper 
went on ; “ so far from it that he takes our sins on him ' 
self that he may clear them out of the universe. How 
could he say that he took our sins upon him if he could 
not make amends for them to those they had hurt ?” 

“Ah !” cried Leopold, with a profound sigh, “if that 
could be ! if he could really do that !” 

“Why, of course he can do that !” said Polwarth. 
“ What sort of watch-maker were he who could not set 
right the watches and clocks himself made 
“ But the hearts of men and women ! — ” 

“Which God does far more than make !” interposed 
Polwarth. “That a being able to make another self- 
conscious being distinct from himself, should be able 
also to set right whatever that being could set wrong 
seems to me to follow of simple necessity. He might 
even, should that be fit, put the man himself in the way 
of making up for what he had done, or at least put it in 
his power to ask and receive a forgiveness that would 
set all right between him and the person wronged. One 
of the painful things in the dogma of the endless loss of 
the wicked is that it leaves no room for the righteous 
to make up to them for the wrongs they did them in 
this life. For the righteous do the wicked far more 
Wrong than they think — the righteous being all the 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


399 


time, in reality, the wealthy, and the wicked the poor. 
But it is a blessed word that there are first that shall be 
last, and last that shall be first.” 

Helen stared. This last sounded to her mere raving 
madness, and she thought hew wrong she had been to 
allow such fanatics to gain power over her poor Leopold 
— who sat before them whiter than ever, and with what 
she took for a wilder gleam in his eye. 

“ Is there not the might of love, and all eternity for it 
to work in, to set things right ?” ended Polwarth. 

“O God!” cried Leopold, “if that might be true! 
That would be a gift indeed — the power to make up for 
the wrong I have done !” 

He rose from the couch — slowly, sedately, I had al- 
most said formally, like one with a settled object — and 
stood erect, swaying a little from weakness. 

“ Mr. Wingfold,” he said, “I want of you one more 
favor : will you take me to the nearest magistrate ? 
I wish to give myself up.” 

Helen started up and came forward, paler than the 
sick man. 

“ Mr. Wingfold ! Mr. Polwarth !” she said, and turned 
from the one to the other, “ the boy is not himself. 
You will never allow him to do such a mad thing !” 

“ It may be the right thing,” said the curate to Leo- 
pold, “ but we must not act without consideration.” 

“I have considered and considered it for days 
— for weeks,” returned Leopold ; “ but until this 

moment 1 never had the courage to resolve on the 
plainest of duties. Helen, if I were to go up to the 


400 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


throne of God with the psalm in my mouth, and say to 
him, ‘ Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,’ it would 
be false ; for I have sinned against every man, woman, 
and child in England at least, and I will repudiate myself. 
To the throne of God I want to go, and there is no way 
thither for me but through the gate of the law.” 

” Leopold !” pleaded Helen as if for her own life with 
some hard judge, “ what good can it do to send another 
life after the one that is gone ? It can not bring it back 
or heal a single sorrow for its loss.” ' 

“ Except, perhaps, my own,” said Leopold in a feeble 
voice, but not the less in a determined tone. 

“ Live till God sends for you,” persisted Helen, heed- 
less of his words. “ You can give your life to make up 
for the wrong you have done in a thousand better ways : 
that would be but to throw it in the dirt ! There is so 
much good waiting to be done !” 

Leopold sank on the couch. 

“ I am sitting down again, Helen, only because I am 
not able to stand,” he said. “ I will go. Don’t talk to 
me about doing good ! Whatever I touched I should but 
smear with blood. I want the responsibility of my own 
life taken off me. I am like the horrible creature Frank- 
enstein made — one that has no right to existence — and at 
the same time like the maker of it, who is accountable 
for that existence. I am a blot on God’s creation that 
must be wiped off. For this my strength is given 
back to me, and I am once more able to will and resolve. 
You will find I can act too. Helen, if you will in- 
deed be my sister, you must not prevent me now. I 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


401 


know it is hard upon you, awfully hard. I know I am 
dragging your life down with mine, but I can not 
help it. If I don’t do it, I shall but go out of one 
madness into another, ever a deeper, until the devils 
can’t hold me. Mr. Polwarth, is it not my duty 
to give myself up.? Ought not the evil thing to 
be made manifest and swept out of the earth } Most 
people grant it a man’s first duty to take care of 
his life : that is the only thing I can do for mine. It 
is now a filthy pool with a corpse in it : I would clean 
it out ; have the thing buried at least, though never for- 
gotten — never, never forgotten. Then I shall die and 
go to God and see what he can do for me.” 

“ Why should you put it off till then ?” said Pol- 
warth. “ Why not go to him at once and tell him all .?” 

As if it had been Samuel at the command of Eli, Leo- 
pold rose and crept feebly across the floor to the 
dressing-room, entered it and closed the door. 

Then Helen turned upon Wingfold with a face 
white as linen and eyes flashing with troubled wrath. 
The tigress-mother swelled in her heart, and she looked 
like a Maenad indeed. 

“ Is this then your religion ?” she cried, with quivering 
nostril. “ Would he you dare to call your master have 
stolen into the house of a neighbor to play upon the 
weakness of a poor lad suffering from brain-fever .? A 
fine trophy of your persuasive power and priestly craft 
you would make of him ! What is it to you whether he 
confesses his sins or not ? If he confesses them to 


402 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


him you say is your God, is not that enough ? For 
shame, gentlemen !” 

She ceased, and stood trembling and flashing — a hu- 
man thunder-cloud. Neither of the men cared to assert 
innocence, because, although they had not advised the 
step, they entirely approved of it. 

A moment more, and her anger suddenly went out. 
She burst into tears, and falling on her knees before the 
curate, begged and prayed like a child condemned to 
some frightful punishment. It was terrible to Wing- 
fold to see a woman in such an agony of prayer to one 
who would not grant it — and that one himself. In vain 
he sought to raise her. 

“ If you do not save Leopold, I will kill myself,” she 
cried, “ and my blood will be on your head.” 

“ The only way to save your brother is to strengthen 
him to do his duty, whatever that may be.” 

The hot-fit of her mental labor returned. She sprang 
to her feet, and her face turned again, almost like that 
of a corpse, with pale wrath. 

“ Leave the house !” she said, turning sharply upon 
Polwarth, who stood solemn and calm at Wingfold’s side, 
a step behind. It was wonderful what an unconscious 
dignity radiated from him. 

“ If my friend goes, I go too,” said Wmgfold. “ But I 
must first tell your brother why.” 

He made a step towards the dressing-room. 

But now came a fresh change of mood upon Helen. 
She darted between him and the door, and stood there 
with such a look of humble entreaty as went to his very 


POLWARTH AND LINGARD. 


403 


heart and all but unmanned him. Ah ! how lovely she 
looked in the silent prayer of tears ! But not even her 
tears could turn Wingfold from what seemed his duty. 
They could only bring answering tears from the depth 
of a tender heart. She saw he would not flinch. 

“ Then may God do to you as you have done to me 
and mine !” she said. 

“ Amen !” returned Wingfold and Polwarth together. 

The door of the dressing-room opened, and out came 
Leopold, his white face shining. 

“ God has heard me !” he cried. 

“ How do you know that ?” said his sister, in the 
hoarse accents of unbelieving despair. 

“ Because he has made me strong to do my duty. He 
has reminded me that another man may be accused of 
my crime, and now to conceal myself were to double 
my baseness.” 

“ It will be time enough to think of that when there 
is a necessity for it. The thing you imagine may never 
happen,” said Helen, in the same unnatural voice. 

“ Leave it,” cried Leopold, “ until an innocent man 
shall have suffered the torture and shame of a false accu- 
sation, that a guilty man may a little longer act the 
hypocrite ! No, Helen, I have not fallen so low as that 
yet. Believe me, this is the only living hour 1 have 
had since I did the deed !” But as he spoke, the light 
died out of his face ; and ere they could reach him, he 
had fallen heavily on the floor. 

“You have killed him!” cried Helen, in a stifled 


404 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


shriek ; for all the time she had never forgotten that her 
aunt might hear. 

But the same moment she caught from his condition 
a lurid hope. 

“ Go, I beg of you,” she said, “by the window there, 
nefore my aunt comes. She must have heard the fall. 
There is the key of the door below.” 

The men obeyed, and left the house in silence. 

It was some time before Leopold returned to con- 
sciousness. He made no resistance to being again put 
to bed, where he lay in extreme exhaustion. 


CHAPTER LXIII. 


THE STRONG MAN. 

HE next day he was still much too exhausted 
and weak to talk about any thing. He took 
what his sister brought him, smiled his 
thanks, and once put up his hand and strok- 
ed her cheek. But her heart was not gladdened by 
these signs of comparative composure, for what gave 
him quiet but the same that filled her with unspeakable 
horror.? 

The day after that was Saturday, and George Bascombe 
came as usual. The sound of his step in the hall made 
her dying hope once more flutter its wings : having lost 
the poor stay of the parson, from whom she had never 
expected much, she turned, in her fresh despair, to her 
cousin, from whom she had never looked for any thing. 
But what was she to say to him ? Nothing yet, she re- 
solved; but she would take him to see Leopold ; for was 
he not sure to hear that the parson had been admitted ? 
She did not feel at all that she was doing right, but she 
would do it ; and if she left them together, possibly 



4o6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


George might drop some good practical advice, which, 
though spoken in ignorance, might yet tell. George was 
such a healthy nature and such a sound thinker ! Was 
it not as ridiculous as horrible for any man to think 
that he had a right to throw away his very existence, 
and bring disgrace upon his family as well, for a mere 
point of honor — no, not honor, mere fastidiousness? 

Leopold was better, and willing enough to see George, 
saying only, 

“ I would rather it were Mr. Wingfold. But he can’t 
come to-day, I suppose, to-morrow being Sunday.” 

George’s entrance brought with it a waft of breezy 
health and a show of bodily vigor pleasant and re- 
freshing to the heart of the invalid. Kindness shone in 
his eyes, and his large, handsome hand was out as usual 
while he was yet yards away. It swallowed up that 
of poor Leopold, and held it fast. 

“ Come come, old fellow ! what’s the meaning of 
this?” he said right cheerily. “You ought to be 
ashamed of yourself — lying in bed like this in such 
weather ! Why ain’t you riding in the park with Helen 
instead of moping in this dark room? You’ll be as 
blind as the fish in the cave of Kentucky if you don’t 
get out of this directly ! We must see what we can 
do to get you up !” 

He glanced round the room, saw that Helen had left 
it, and changed his tone to a lower and more serious 
one : 

“ I say, my boy, you must Have been playing old Har- 
ry with your constitution to bring yourself to such a 


THE STRONG MAN. 


407 


pass! By Jove ! this will never do ! You must turn 
over a new leaf, you know. That sort of thing never 
pays. The game’s not worth the candle. Why, you’ve 
been at death’s door, and life’s not so long that you can 
afford to play ducks and drakes with it.” 

Thus he talked, in expostulatory rattle, the very high- 
priest of social morality, for some time before Leopold 
could get a word in. But when he did, it turned the 
current into quite another channel. 

An hour passed, and George reappeared in the draw- 
ing-room, where Helen was waiting for him. He looked 
very grave. 

“ I fear matters are worse with poor Leopold than I 
had imagined,” he said. 

Helen gave a sad nod of acquiescence. 

“ He’s quite off his head,” continued George," — telling 
me such an awful cock-and-bull stoay with the greatest 
gravity I He will have it that he is a murderer — the 
murderer of that very girl I was telling you about, you 
remember — ” 

" Yes, yes ! I know,” said Helen, as a faint gleam of 
reviving hope shot up from below her horizon. George 
took the whole thing for a sick fancy, and who was likely 
to know better than he— a lawyer, and skilled in evi- 
dence ? Not a word would she say to interfere with such 
an opinion ! 

" I hope you gave him a good talking to,” she said. 

" Of course I did,” he answered ; " but it was of no 
use. I see exactly how it is. He gave me a full and cir- 
cumstantial account of the affair, filling up all the gaps, 


4o8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


it is true, but going only just as far as the newspapers 
supplied the skeleton. How he got away, for instance, 
he could not tell me. And now nothing will serve him 
but confess it ! He don’t care who knows it ! He’s as 
mad as a hatter ! — I beg your pardon, Helen — on that 
one point, I mean. The moment I saw him 1 read mad- 
ness in his eye. What’s to be done now ?” 

“ George, I look to you,” said Helen. “ Poor aunt is 
no use. Think what will become of her if the unhappy 
boy should attempt to give himself up ! We should be 
the talk of the county — of the whole country !” 

“ Why didn’t you tell me of this before, Helen ? It 
must have been coming on for some time.” 

“ George, I didn’t know what to do. And I had heard 
you say such terrible things about the duty of punish- 
ing crime.” 

“ Good gracious ! Helen, where is your logic ? What 
has crime to do with it ? Is downright stark, staring 
madness a crime ? Any one with half an eye can see the 
boy is mad !” 

Helen saw she had made a slip, and held her peace. 
George went on : 

“ He ought to be shut up.” 

“ No ! no ! no !” Helen almost screamed, and covered 
her face with her hands. 

I’ve done my best to persuade him. But I will have 
another try. That a fellow is out of his mind is no reason 
why he should be unassailable by good logic — that is, if 
you take him on his own admissions.” 


THE STRONG MAN. 


409 


“ I fear you will make nothing of him, George, He is 
set upon it, and I don’t know what is to be done.” 

George got up, went back to Leopold, and plied hin\ 
with the very best of arguments. But they were of no 
avail. There was but one door out of hell, and that 
was the door of confession — let what might lie on the 
other side of it. 

“ Who knows,” he said, “ but the law of a life for a 
life may have come of compassion for the murderer 

“ Nonsense !” said George. “ It comes of the care of 
society over its own constituent parts.” 

“ Whatever it came from, I know this,” returned Leo- 
pold, “ that since I made up my mind to confess, I am a 
man again.” 

George was silent. He found himself in that 
rare condition for him — perplexity. It would be 
most awkward if the thing came to be talked of ! 
Some would even be fools enough to believe the story ! 
Entire proof of madness would only make such set it 
down as the consequence — or if pity prevailed, then as 
the cause — of the deed. They might be compelled to 
shut him up to avoid no end of the most frightful annoy- 
ances. But Helen, he feared, would* not consent to 
that. And then his story was so circumstantial — and 
therefore so far plausible — that there was no doubt most 
magistrates would be ready at once to commit him for 
trial — and then where would there be an end of the 
most offensive embarrassments.^ 

Thus George reflected uneasily. But at length an 
idea struck him. 


410 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Well,” he said lightly, “ if you will, you will. We must 
try to make it as easy for you as we can. I will manage 
it, and go with you. I know all about such things, you 
know. But it won’t do just to-day. If you were to go 
before a magistrate looking as you do now, he would not 
listen to a word you uttered. He would only fancy you 
in a fever, and send you to bed. If you are quiet to-day 
— let me see : to-morrow is Sunday — and if you are in the 
sam.e mind on Monday, I will take you to Mr. Hooker — 
he’s one of the county magistrates — and you shall make 
your statement to him.” 

“ Thank you. I should like Mr. Wingfold to go too.” 

“ So !” said George to himself. “ By all means,” he 
answered. “ We can take him with us.” 

He went again to Helen. 

“This is a most awkward business,” he said. “ Poor 
girl ! what you must have gone through with him ! I had 
no idea ! But I see my way out of it. Keep your mind 
easy, Helen. I do see w'hat I can do. Only, what’s the 
meaning of his wanting that fellow Wingfold to go with 
him ? I shouldn’t a bit wonder now if it all came of 
some of his nonsense ! At least it may be that ass of 
a curate that ha§ put confession in his head — to save 
his soul, of course ! How did he come to see him .?” 

“ The poor boy would see him.” 

“ What made him want to see him ?” 

Helen held her peace. She saw George suspected the 
truth. 

“ Well, no matter,” said George. “ But one never 
knows what may come of things. We ought always 


THE STRONG MAN. 


41 1 


to look well ahead. You had better go and lie down 
a while, Helen ; you don’t seem quite yourself.” 

“ I am afraid to leave Leopold,” she answered. “ He 
will be telling aunt and everybody now.” 

“That I will take care he does not,” said George. 
“ You go and lie down a while.” 

Helen’s strength had been sorely tried ; she had 
borne up bravely to the last ; but now that she could 
do no more, and her brother had taken himself out of 
her hands, her strength had begun to give way, and, al- 
most for the first time in her life, in daylight, she long- 
ed to go to bed. Let George, or Wingfold, or who would, 
see to the wilful boy ; she had done what she could. 

She gladly yielded to George’s suggestion, sought an 
unoccupied room, bolted the door, and threw herself 
upon the bed. 


CHAPTER LXIV. 


GEORGE AND LEOPOLD. 

EORGE went again to Leopold’s room, and sat 
down by him. The youth lay with his eyes 
half closed, and a smile — a faint, sad one — 
flickered over his face. He was asleep : 
from infancy he had slept with his eyes open. 

“ Emmeline !” he murmured, in the tone of one who 
entreats forgiveness. 

Strange infatuation !” said George to himself. 
“ Even his dreams are mad. Good God ! there can’t be 
any thing in it, can there ? I begin to feel as if I were not 
quite safe myself. Mad-doctors go mad themselves 
they say. I wonder what sort of floating sporule carries 
the infection — reaching the brain by the nose, I fancy. 
Or perhaps there is latent madness in us all, requiring 
only the presence of another madness to set it free.” 

Leopold was awake and looking at him. 

“ Is it a very bad way of dying ?” he asked. 

“ What is, old boy ?” 

“ Hanging.” 



GEORGE AND LEOPOLD. 


413 


“Yes, very bad — choking, you know,” answered 
George, who wanted to make the worst of it. 

“ I thought the neck was broken and all was over,” 
returned Leopold, with a slight tremor in his voice. 

“ Yes, that’s how it ought to be ; but it fails so often !” 

“At least there’s no more hanging in public, and 
that’s a comfort,” said Leopold. 

“ What a queer thing,” said George to himself, “ that 
a man should be ready to hang for an idea ! Why 
should he not do his best to enjo)'' what is left of the sun- 
light, seeing, as their own prophets say, the night 
cometh when no man can work ? A few more whiffs 
of his cigar before it goes out would hurt no one. It 
is one thing to hang a murderer, and quite another to 
hang yourself if you happen to be the man. But he’s 
stark, raving mad, and must be humored. Dance upon 
nothing for an idea ! Well, it’s not without plenty 
of parallels in history ! I wonder whether his one idea 
would give way now if it were brought to the actual test 
of hanging! It is a pity it couldn’t be tried, just for 
experiment’s sake. But a strait-waistcoat would be 
better.” 

Leopold’s acquaintance with George had been but 
small, and of his favorite theories he knew nothing. But 
he had always known that he was not merely his sister’s 
cousin, but the trusted friend both of her and of her aunt ; 
and since he had come* to know of his frequent visits, he 
had -begun to believe him more to Helen than a 
friend. Hence the moment he had made up his mind to 
confess, he was ready to trust George entirely ; and 


414 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


although he was disappointed to find him receive his 
communication in a spirit so different from that of Wing- 
fold and his friend, he felt no motion of distrust on that 
account, seeing Helen, who had been to him true as 
steel, took the same view of his resolution. 

“ What would you do yourself then, George, if you 
had committed a crime like mine ?” he asked, after lying 
silent for a while. 

None of George’s theories had greatly taxed his im- 
agination. He had not been in any habit of fancying 
himself in this or that situation — and when he did, it 
was always in some pleasant one of victory or recogni- 
tion. Possible conditions of humanity other than pleas- 
ant he had been content to regard from the outside and 
come to logical conclusions concerning, without, as a 
German would say, thinking himself into them at all ; 
and it would have been to do the very idea of George 
Bascombe a wrong to imagine him entangled in any such 
net of glowing wire as a crime against human society ! 
Therefore, although for most questions George had 
always an answer ready, for this he had none at hand, 
and required a moment, and but a moment, to think. 

“ I would say to myself,” he replied, “ ‘ What is done 
is done, and is beyond my power to alter or help.’ 
And so I would be a man, and bear it — not a weakling, 
and let it crush me. No, by Jove ! it shouldn’t crush 
mer 

“Ah! but you haven’t tried the weight of it, 
George !” returned Leopold. 

“ God forbid !” said George. 


GEORGE AND LEOPOLD. 


415 


“God forbid ! indeed,” rejoined Leopold ; “but there 
’tis done for all his forbidding !” 

“ What’s done is done, God or devil, and must be 
borne, I say,” said Bascombe, stretching out his legs. 
He was aware it sounded heartless, but how could he 
help it.^ What else was there to be said } 

“ But if you can’t bear it ? If it is driving you mad — 
mad— mad ! If you must do something or kill your- 
self ?” cried Leopold. 

“ You haven’t done your best at trying yet,” returned 
George. “ But you are ill, and not very able to try, I 
dare say, and so we can’t help it. On Monday we shall 
go to Mr. Hooker, and see what he says to it.” 

He rose and went to get a book from the library. On 
the stair he met the butler : Mr. Wingfold had called to 
see Mr. Lingard. 

“ He can’t see him to-day ; he is too much exhausted,” 
said Bascombe ; and the curate left the house thoughtful 
and sorry, feeling as if a vulture had settled by the side 
of the youth — a good-natured vulture, no doubt, but 
not the less one bent on picking out the eyes of his 
mind. 

He walked away along the street towards the church 
with downbent head, seeing no one. He entered the 
churchyard not looking whither he went : a lovely soul 
was in pain and peril, and he could not get near to help 
it. They were giving it choRe-damp to breathe, instead 
of mountain air. They were washing its sores with an- 
odynes instead of laying them open with the knife of 
honesty, that they might be cleansed and healed. He 


4i6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


found himself stumbling among the level gravestones, 
and stopped and sat down. 

He sat a while, seeming to think of nothing, his eyes 
resting on a little tuft of moss that shone like green 
gold in the sunlight on the shoulder of an awkward 
little cherub’s wing. Ere long he found himself 
thinking how not the soul of Leopold but that of 
Helen was in chief danger. Poor Leopold had the ser- 
pent of his crime to sting him alive, but Helen had the 
vampire of an imperfect love to fan her asleep with the 
airs of a false devotion. It was Helen he had to be 
anxious about more than Leopold. 

He rose and walked back to the house. 

“ Can I see Miss Lingard ?” he asked. 

It was a maid who opened the door this time. She 
showed him into the library, and went to inquire. 


CHAPTER LXV. 


WINGFOLD AND HELEN. 

HEN Helen lay down, she tried to sleep ; but 
she could not even lie still. For all her 
preference of George and his counsel, and 
her hope in the view he took of Leopold’s 
case, the mere knowledge that in the next room her 
cousin sat by her brother made her anxious and restless. 

At first it was the bare feeling that they were tO' 
together — the thing she had for so long taken such pains 
to prevent. Next came the fear lest Leopold should 
succeed in persuading George that he was* really guilty 
■ — in which case what should George, the righteous man, 
counsel ? And, last and chief of all, what hope of peace 
to Leopold could he in any of his counsel — except, inaeed, 
he led him up to the door of death and urged him into 
the nothingness behind it ? Then what if George should 
be wrong, and there was something behind it What- 
ever sort of a something it might be, could the teaching 
of George be in the smallest measure a preparation for 
it ? Were it not better, so far as the possibility which 



4i8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


remained untouched by any of George’s arguments was 
concerned, that Leopold should die believing after 
Mr. Wingfold’s fashion, and not disbelieving after 
George’s ? If then there were nothing behind, he would 
be nothing the worse ; if there were, the curate might 
have in some sort prepared him for it. 

And now first she began to feel that she was a little 
afraid of her cousin — that she had yielded to his in- 
fluence, or rather allowed him to assume upon tiie 
possession of influence, until she was aware of some- 
thing that • somewhere galled. He was a very good 
fellow, but was he one fit to rule her life Would 
her nature consent to look up to his always, if she 
were to marry him ? But the thought only flitted like 
a cloud across the surface of her mind, for all her care 
was Leopold, and, alas ! with him she was now almost 
angry, and it grieved her sorely. 

All these feelings together had combined to form 
her mood, when her maid came to the door with the 
message that Mr. Wingfold was in the library. She re- 
solved at once to see him. 

The curate’s heart trembled a little as he waited for 
her. He was not quite sure that it was his business to 
tell her her duty, yet something seemed to drive him to 
it : he could not bear the idea of hergoing on in the path 
of crookedness. It is no easy matter for one man to tell 
another his duty in the simplest relations of life ; and 
here was a man, naturally shy and self-distrustful, dar- 
ing to rebuke and instruct a woman whose presence was 


WINGFOLD AND HELEN. 


419 


mighty upon him, and whose influence was tenfold 
heightened by the suffering that softened her beauty ! 

She entered, troubled, yet stately ; doubtful, yet with 
a kind of half-trust in her demeanor ; white and blue- 
eyed, with pained mouth and a droop of weariness and 
suffering in eyelids and neck— a creature to be wor- 
shipped, if only for compassion and dignified distress. 

Thomas Wingfold’s nature was one more than usually 
bent towards helpfulness, but his early history, his lack 
of friends, of confidence, of convictions, of stand or aim 
in life, had hitherto prevented the outcome of that ten- 
dency. But now, like issuing water, which, having found 
way, gathers force momently, the pent-up ministration 
of his soul was asserting itself. Now that he under- 
stood more of the human heart, and recognized in this 
and that human countenance the bars of a cage through 
which peeped an imprisoned life, his own heart burned in 
him with the love of the helpless ; and if there was min- 
gled therein any thing of the ambition of benefaction, any 
thing of the love of power, any thing of self-recommen- 
dation, pride of influence, or desire to be acentre of good, 
and rule in a small kingdom of the aided and aiding, 
these marshy growths had the fairest chance of dying an 
obscure death ; for the one sun potent on the wheat for 
life and on the tares for death is the face of Christ Jesus, 
and in that presence Wingfold lived more and more 
from day to day. 

And now came Helen, who, more than any one whose 
history he had yet learned — more perhaps than even her 
brother — needed such help as he confidently hoped he 


420 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


knew now where she might find ! But when he saw her 
stand before him wounded and tearful and proud, regard_ 
ing his behavior in respect of her brother as cruel and 
heartless ; when he felt in his very soul that she was 
jealous of his influence, that she disliked and even de- 
spised him, it was only with a strong effort he avoided 
assuming a manner correspondent to the idea of himself 
he saw reflected in her mind, and submitting himself, as 
it were, to be what she judged him. 

When, however, by a pure effort of will, he rose above 
this weakness and looked her full and clear in the face, 
a new jealousy of himself arose : she stood there so love- 
ly, so attractive, so tenfold womanly in her misery, that 
he found he must keep a stern watch upon himself lest 
interest in her as a woman should trespass on the 
sphere of simple humanity, wherein with favoring dis- 
tinction is recognized neither Jew nor Greek, prince 
nor peasant — not even man or woman ; only the one hu- 
man heart that can love and suffer. It aided him in 
this respect, however, that his inherent modesty caused 
him to look up to Helen as to a suffering goddess, noble, 
grand, lovely, only ignorant of the one secret of which he, 
haunting the steps of the Unbound Prometheus, had 
learned a few syllables, broken yet potent, which he 
would fain, could he find how, communicate in their po- 
tency to her. And besides, to help her now looking upon 
him from the distant height of conscious superiority, he 
must persuade her to what she regarded as an unendura- 
ble degradation ! The circumstances assuredly protected 


WINGFOLD AND HELEN. 


421 


him from any danger of offering her such expression of 
sympathy as might not have been welcome to her. 

It is true that the best help a woman can get is from a 
right man ; equally true with its converse ; but let 
the man who ventures take heed. Unless he is able to 
counsel a woman to the hardest thing that bears the 
name of duty, let him not dare give advice even to her 
asking. 

Helen, however, had not come to ask advice of 
Wingfold. She was in no such mood. She was indeed 
weary of a losing strife, and, only for a glimmer of pos- 
sible help from her cousin, saw ruin inevitable before 
her. But this revival of hope in George had roused 
afresh her indignation at the intrusion of Wingfold with 
what she chose to lay to his charge as unsought coun- 
sel. At the same time, through all the indignation, 
terror, and dismay, something within her murmured au- 
dibly enough that the curate, and not her cousin, was the 
guide who could lead her brother where grew the herb 
of what peace might yet be had. It was therefore with 
a sense of bewilderment, discord, and uncertainty that 
she now entered the library. 

Wingfold rose, made his obeisance, and advanced a 
step or two. He would not offer a hand that might be 
unwelcome, and Helen did not offer hers. She bent her 
neck graciously, and motioned him to be seated. 

“ I hope Mr. Lingard is not worse," he said. 

Helen started. Had any thing happened while she 
had been away from him ? 


422 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“No. Why should he be worse?” she answered. 
“ Have they told you any thing ?” 

“ I have heard nothing ; only, as I was not allowed 
to see him — ” 

“ I left him with Mr. Bascombe half an hour ago,” 
she said, willing to escape the imputation of having re- 
fused him admittance. 

Wingfold gave an involuntary sigh. 

“ You do not think that gentleman’s company desira- 
ble for my brother, I presume,” she said, with a smile 
so lustreless that it seemed bitter. “ He won’t do him 
any harm — at least I do not think you need fear it.” 

“Why not? No one in your profession can think his 
opinions harmless, and certainly he will not suppress 
them.” 

“A man with such a weight on his soul as your 
brother carries will not be ready to fancy it lightened 
by having lumps of lead thrown upon it. An easy 
mind may take a shroud on its shoulders for wings, 
but when trouble comes and it wants to fly, then it 
knows the difference. Leopold will not be misled by 
Mr. Bascombe.” 

Helen grew paler. She would have him misled — so 
far as not to betray himself. 

“ I am far more afraid of your influence than of his,” 
added the curate. 

“ What bad influence do you suppose me likely to ex- 
ercise ?” asked Helen, with a cold smile. 

“The bad influence of wishing him to act upon your 
conscience instead of his own.” 


WINGFOLD AND HELEN. 


423 


“ Is my conscience then a worse one than Leopold’s }*' 
she asked, but as if she felt no interest in the answer. 

“ It is not his, and that is enough. His own, and no 
other, can tell him what to do.” 

“ Why not leave him to it, then ?” she said bitterly. 

“ That is what I want of you. Miss Lingard. I would 
have you fear to touch the life of the poor youth.” 

“ Touch his life ! I would give him mine to save it. 
You counsel him to throw it away !” . 

“ Alas ! what different meanings we put on the word ! 
You call the few years he may have to live in this world 
his life ; while I — ” 

“ While you count it the millions of which you know 
nothing — somewhere whence no one has ever returned 
to bring any news ! — a wretched life at best, if it be 
such as you represent it.” 

“ Pardon me, that is merely what you suppose I mean 
by the word. I do not mean that ; I mean some- 
thing altogether different. When I spoke of his 
life, I thought nothing about here or there, now 
or then. You will see what I mean if you think how 
the life came back to his eye and the color to his cheek 
the moment he had made up his mind to do what 
had long seemed his duty. When I saw him again, that 
V light was still in his eyes and a feeble hope looked out 
of every feature. Existence, from a demon-haunted va- 
por, had begun to change to a morning of spring ; life, 
the life of conscious well-being, of law and order and 
peace, had begun to dawn in obedience and self-renun- 
ciation ; his resurrection was at hand. But you then. 


424 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


and now you and Mr. Bascombe, would stop this resur- 
rection ; you would seat yourselves upon his gravestone 
to keep him down! And why ? Lest he, lest you, lest 
your family should be disgraced by letting him out of 
his grave to tell the truth.” 

“ Sir 1” cried Helen indignantly, drawing herself to her 
full height and something more. 

Wingfold took one step nearer to her. “ My calling is 
to speak the truth,” he said ; “ and I am bound to warn 
you that you will never be at peace in your own soul un- 
til you love-your brother aright.” 

“ Love my brother !” Helen almost screamed. “ I 
would die for him.” 

“ Then at least let your pride die for him,” said Wing- 
fold, not without indignation. 

Helen left the room, and Wingfold the house. 

She had hardly shut the door and fallen again upon 
the bed, when she began to know in her heart that the 
curate was right. But the more she knew it, the less 
would she confess it even to herself : it was unendura- 
ble. 


CHAPTER LXVI. 


A REVIEW. 

E curate walked hurriedly home and seated 
himself at his table, where yet lay his Greek 
Testament open at the passage he had been 
pondering for his sermon. Alas ! all he had 
then been thinking with such fervor had vanished. He 
knew his inspiring text, but the rest was gone. Worst of 
all, feeling was gone with thought, and was, for the time 
at least, beyond recall. Righteous as his anger was, it 
had ruffled the mirror of his soul till it could no long- 
er reflect heavenly things. He rose, caught up his New 
Testament, and went to the churchyard. It was a still 
place, and since the pains of the new birth had come up- 
on him, he had often sought the shelter of its calm. A 
few yards from the wall of the rectory-garden stood an 
old yew-tree, and a little nearer on one side was a small 
thicket of cypress ; between these and the wall was an 
ancient stone upon which he generally seated himself. 
It already had begun to be called the curate’s chair. 
Most imagined him drawn thither by a clerical love of 



426 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


gloom, but in that case he could scarcely have had much 
delight in seeing the sky through the dark foliage of the 
yew ; he thought the parts so seen looked more divine- 
ly blue than any of the rest. He would have admitted, 
however, that he found quiet for the soul as well as the 
body upon this edge of the world, this brink of the gulf 
that swallowed the ever-pouring ever-vanishing, Niagara 
of human life. On the stone he now seated himself, and 
fell a-musing. 

What a change had come upon him — slow indeed, yet 
how vast — since the night when he sat in the same 
churchyard indignant and uneasy, with the words of 
Bascombe like hot coals in his heart ! He had been 
made ashamed of himself who had never thought much 
of himself, but the more he had lost of worthiness in 
his own eyes, the more he had gained in worth ; and 
the more his poor satisfaction with himself had died 
out, the more the world had awaked around him. For 
it must be remembered that a little conceit is no more 
to be endured than a great one, but must be swept 
utterly away. Sky and wind and water and birds and 
frees said to him, “ Forget thyself, and we will think of 
thee. Sing no more to thyself thy foolish songs of 
decay, and we will all sing to thee of love and hope and 
faith and resurrection.” Earth and air had grown full of 
hints and sparkles and vital motions, as if between 
them and his soul an abiding community of fundamen- 
tal existence had manifested itself. He had never, in 
the old days that were so near and yet seeme«d so far 
behind him, consciously cared for the sunlight: now 


A REVIEW. 


427 


even the shadows were marvellous in his eyes, and the 
glitter of the golden weather-cock on the tower was like 
a cry of the prophet Isaiah. High and alone in the clear 
blue air it swung, an endless warning to him that veers 
with the wind of the world, the words of men, the sum- 
mer breezes of their praise, or the bitter blasts of their 
wintry blame ; it was no longer to him a cock of the 
winds, but a cock of- the truth — a Peter-cock, that crew 
aloud in golden shine its rebuke of cowardice and lying. 
Never before had he sought acquaintance with the 
flowers that came dreaming up out of the earth in the 
woods and the lanes like a mist of loveliness, but the 
spring-time came in his own soul, and then he knew the 
children of the spring. And as the joy of the reviving 
world found its way into the throats of the birds, so did 
the spring in his reviving soul find its way into the chan- 
nels of thought and speech, and issue in utterance both 
rhythmic and melodious. But not in any, neither in all 
of these things lay the chief sign and embodiment of the 
change he recognized in itself. It was this: that whereas 
in former times the name Christ had been to him little 
more than a dull theological symbol, the thought of him 
and of his thoughts was now constantly with him ; ever 
and anon some fresh light would break from the cloudy 
halo that enwrapped his grandeur ; ever was he growing 
more the Son of Man to his loving heart, ever more the 
Son of God to his aspiring spirit. Testimony had 
merged almost in vision : he saw into, and partly under- 
stood, the perfection it presented : he looked upon the 
face of God and lived. Oltener and oftener, as the days 


428 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


passed, did it seem as if the man were by his side, and 
at times, in the stillness of the summer eve, when he 
walked alone, it seemed almost, as thoughts of revealing 
arose in his heart, that the Master himself was teaching 
him in spoken words. What need now to rack his soul 
in following the dim-seen, ever-vanishing paths of 
metaphysics ? He had but to obey the prophet of life, the 
man whose being and doing and teaching were blended 
in one three-fold harmony — or, rather, were the three- 
fold analysis of one white essence — he had but to obey 
him, haunt his footsteps, and hearken after the sound of 
his spirit, and all truth would in healthy process be un- 
folded in himself. What philosophy could carry him 
where Jesus would carry his obedient friends — into his 
own peace, namely, farabove all fear'and all hate, where 
his soul should breathe such a high atmosphere of 
strength at once and repose, that he should love even his 
enemies, and that with no such love as condescendingly 
overlooks, but with the real, hearty, and self-involved 
affection that would die to give them the true life ! 
Alas ! how far was he from such perfection now — from 
such a martyrdom, lovely as endless, in the consuming 
fire of God ! And at the thought, he fell from the 
heights of his contemplation — but was caught in the 
thicket of prayer. 

By the time he reached his lodging, the glow had 
vanished, but the mood remained. He sat down and 
wrote the first sketch of the following verses, then 
found that his sermon had again drawn nigh and was 
within the reach of his spiritual tentacles. 


A REVIEW. 


429 


Father, I cry to thee for bread, 

With hungered longing, eager prayer ; 

Thou hear’st, and givest me instead 
More hunger and a half despair. 

0 Lord ! how long? My days decline 
My youth is lapped in memories old 

1 need not bread alone, but wine — 

See, cup and hand to thee I hold. 

And yet thou givest : thanks, O Lord ! 
That still my heart with hunger faints ! 

The day will come when at thy board 
I sit forgetting all my plaints. 

If rain must come and winds must blow. 
And I pore long o’er dim-seen chart, 

Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go. 

And keep the faintness at my heart. 


CHAPTER LXVII. 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 

HEN the curate stood up to read, his eyes as 
of themselves sought Mrs. Ramshorn’s pew. 
There sat Helen, with a look that revealed, 
he thought, more of determination and less 
of suffering. Her aunt was by her side, cold and glar- 
ing, an ecclesiastical puss, ready to spring upon any 
small church-mouse that dared squeak in its own murine 
way. Bascombe was not visible, and that was a relief. 
For an unbelieving face, whether the dull, dining coun- 
tenance of a mayor or the keen, searching countenance 
of a barrister, is a sad bone in the throat of utterance, 
and has to be of set will passed over, and, if that may be, 
forgotten. Wingfold tried hard to forget Mrs. Rams- 
horn’s, and one or two besides, and by the time he came 
to the sermon, thought of nothing but human hearts, 
their agonies, and Him who came to call them to him. 

“ / came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 
“ Was it then of the sinners first our Lord thought ere 
he came from the bosom of the Father > Did the per- 



A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


431 


feet will embrace, in the all-atoning tenderness of the 
divine heart, the degraded, disfigured, defiled, distorted 
thing, whose angel is too blind ever to see the face of 
its Father ? Through all the hideous filth of the charnel- 
house which the passions had heaped upon her, did the 
Word recognize the bound, wing-lamed, feather-draggled 
Psyche, panting in horriblest torture ? Did he have a 
desire to the work of his hands, the child of his father’s 
heart, and therefore, strong in compassion, speed to the 
painful rescue of hearts like his own ? That purity and 
defilement should thus meet across all the great dividing 
gulf of law and morals ! The friend of publicans and 
sinners ’ Think : he was absolutely friendly with them ! 
was not shocked at them ! held up no hands of dismay ! 
Only they must do so no more. 

“ If he were to come again visibly, now, which do you 
think would come crowding around him in greater 
numbers — the respectable church-goers or the people 
from the slums ? 1 do not know. I dare not judge. But 
the fact that the church draws so few of those that are 
despised, of those whom Jesus drew and to whom most 
expressly he came, gives ground for question as to how 
far the church is like her Lord. Certainly many a one 
would find the way to the feet of the Master from whom 
he respectable church-goer, the Pharisee of our time, 
and the priest who stands on his profession, would draw 
back with disgust. And doubtless it would be in the 
religious world that a man like Jesus, who, without a 
professional education, a craftsman by birth and early 
training, uttered scarce a phrase indorsed by clerical 


432 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


use, or a word of the religious cant of the day, but 
taught in simplest natural forms the eternal facts of faith 
and hope and love, would meet with the chief and perhaps 
the only bitier opponents of his doctrine and life. 

“ But did our Lord not call the righteous } Did he not 
call honest men about him — James and John and Simon 
—sturdy fisher-folk, who faced the night and the storm. 
Worked hard, fared roughl)^ lived honestly, and led good, 
cleanly lives with father and mother or with wife and 
children } I do not know that he said anything special 
to convince them that they were sinners before he called 
them. But it is to be remarked that one of the first 
effects of his company upon Simon Peter was that the 
fisherman grew ashamed of himself, and while ashamed 
was yet possessed with an impulse of openness and hon- 
esty no less than passionate. The pure man should not 
be deceived as to what sort of company he was in ! 
‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord ! ’ I 
would I could clearly behold with my mind’s eye what 
he then saw in Jesus that drew from him that cry ! He 
knew him for the Messiah : what was the working of the 
carpenter upon the fisherman that satisfied him of the 
fact.^ Would the miracle have done it but for the pre- 
vious talk from the boat to the people } I think not. 
Anyhow, St. Peter judged himself among the sinners, 
and we may be sure that if these fishers had been self- 
satisfied men, they would not have left all and gone 
after Him who called them. Still it would hardly seem 
that it was specially as sinners that he did so. Again, 
did not men such as the Lord himself regarded as right- 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


433 


eons come to him — Nicodemus, Nathaniel, the young 
man who came running and kneeled to him, the scribe 
who was not far from the kingdom, the centurion, in 
whom he found more faith than in any Jew, he who had 
built a synagogue in Capernaum, and sculptured on its 
lintel the pot of manna ? These came to him, and we 
know he was ready to receive them. But he knew such 
would always come, drawn of the Father ; they did not 
want much calling ; they were not so much in his 
thoughts ; therefore, he was not troubled about them ; 
they were as the ninety-and-nine, the elder son at home, 
the money in the purse. Doubtless they had much to 
learn, were not yet in the kingdom, but they were 
crowding about its door. If I set it forth aright I know 
not, but thus it looks to me. And one thing I can not 
forget — it meets me in the face — that some at least — who 
knows if not all ? — of the purest of men have counted 
themselves the greatest sinners ! Neither can I forget 
that other saying of our Lord, a stumbling-block to 
many — our Lord was not so careful as perhaps some 
would have had him, lest men should stumble at the 
truth — T^e first shall be last, and the last first. While our 
Lord spoke the words, The thne cometh that whosoever 
killethyou will think that he doeth God service, even then 
was Saul of Tarsus at the feet of Gamaliel, preparing to 
do God that service ; but like one born out of due time, 
after all the rest he saw the Lord, and became the chief 
in labor and suffering. Thus the last became first. And 
I bethink me that the beloved disciple, he who leaned 
on the bosom of the Lord, who was bolder to ask him 


434 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


than any — with the boldness of love, he whom the meek 
and lowly called a Son of Thunder, was the last of all to 
rejoin the Master in the mansions of his Father. Last 
or first — if only we are with him ! One thing is clear: 
that in the order of the Lord’s business, first came 
sinners. 

“ Who that reflects can fail to see this at least : that a 
crime brings a man face to face with the reality of 
things ? He who knows himself a sinner — I do not 
mean as one of the race : the most self-righteous man 
will allow that as a man he is a sinner — he to whom, in the 
words of the communion-service, the remembrance of 
his sins is grievous, and the burden of them intolerable, 
knows in himself that he is a lost man. He can no 
more hold up his head among his kind ; he can not look 
a woman or a child in the face ; he can not be left alone 
with the chaos of his thoughts and the monsters it mo- 
mently breeds. The joys of his childhood, the delights 
of existence, are gone from him. There dwells within 
him an ever-present judgment and fiery indignation. 
Such a man will start at the sound of pardon and peace 
even as the camel of the desert at the scent of water. 
Therefore surely is such a man nearer to the gate of the 
kingdom than he against whom the world has never 
wagged a tongue, who never sinned against a social cus- 
tom even, and has as easy a conscience as the day he was 
born, but who knows so little of himself that, while he 
thinks he is good enough, he carries within him the capac- 
ity and possibility of every cardinal sin, waiting only the 
special and fitting temptation which, like the match to 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


435 


the charged mine, shall set all in a roar ! Of his danger he 
knows nothing, never dreams of praying against it, takes 
his seat in his pew Sunday after Sunday with his family, 
nor ever murmurs Lead its not into temptation with the 
least sense that temptation is a frightful thing, but re- 
peats and responds and listens in perfect self-satisfac- 
tion, doubting never that a world made up of such as 
he must be a pleasant sight in the eyes of the Perfect. 
There are men who will never see what they are capa- 
ble or in danger of until they have committed some 
fearful wrong. Nay, there are some for whom even 
that is not enough : they must be found out by their 
fellow-men, and scorned in the eyes of the world, 
before they can or will admit or comprehend their own 
disgrace. And there are worse still than these. 

“ But a man may be oppressed by his sins, and hardly 
Know what it is that oppresses him. There is more of 
sin in our burdens than we are ourselves aware. It 
needs not that we should have committed any grievous 
fault. Do we recognize in ourselves that which needs 
to be set right, that of which we ought to be ashamed, 
something which, were we lifted above all worldly 
anxieties, would yet keep us uneasy, dissatisfied, take 
the essential gladness out of the sunlight, make the fair 
face of the earth indifferent to us, a trustful glance a 
discomposing look, and death a darkness ? I say to the 
man who feels thus, whatever he may have done or left 
undone, he is not so far from the kingdom of heaven 
but that he may enter thereinto if he will. 

“And if there be here any soul withered up with 


436 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


dismay, torn with horrible wonder that he should 
have done the deed which he yet hath done, to him I 
say, ‘ Flee from the self that hath sinned and hide 
thee with Christ in God.’ Or, if the words sound 
to thee as the words of some unknown tongue, and 
I am to thee as one that beateth the air, I say instead, 
Call aloud in thy agony, that, if there be a God, 
he may hear the voice of his child and put forth 
his hand and lay hold upon him, and rend from him 
the garment that clings and poisons and burns, 
squeeze the black drop from his heart, and set him 
weeping like a summer rain. O blessed, holy, lovely 
repentance to which the Son of Man, the very root and 
man of men, hath come to call us ! Good it is, and I 
know it. Come and repent with me, O heart wounded 
by thine own injustice and wrong, and together we will 
seek the merciful ! Think not about thy sin so as to 
make it either less or greater in thine own eyes. Bring it 
to Jesus, and let him show thee how vile a thing it is. 
And leave it to him to judge thee, sure that he will 
judge thee justly, extenuating nothing ; for he hath to 
cleanse thee utterly, and yet forgetting no smallest ex- 
cuse that may cover the amazement of thy guilt, or wit- 
ness for thee that not with open eyes didst thou do the 
deed. At the last he cried. Father , forgive them, for they 
know not what they do. For his enemies the truth should 
be spoken, his first words when they had nailed him to the 
cross. But again I say. Let it be Christ that excuseth 
thee ; he will do it to more purpose than thou, and will 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


437 


not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair too much, or 
thy heart by excusing thee a hair too little. 

“ I dreamed once that I had committed a terrible crime. 
Carried beyond myself by passion, I knew not at the 
moment how evil was the thing I did. But I knew 
it was evil. And suddenly I became aware, when it was 
too late, of the nature of that which I had done. The 
horror that came with the knowledge was of the things 
that belong only to the secret soul. I was the same man 
as before I did it, yet was I now a man of whom my former 
self could not have conceived the possibility as dwelling 
within it. That former self seemed now by contrast 
lovely in purity, yet out of that seeming purity this 
fearful foul I of the present had just been born ! The 
face of my fellow-man was an avenging law, the face of 
a just enemy. Where, how, should the frightful fact be 
hidden } The conscious earth must take it into its 
wounded bosom, and that before the all-seeing daylight 
should come. But it would come, and I should stand 
therein pointed at by every ray that shot through the 
sunny atmosphere ! 

“ The agony was of its own kind, and I have no word 
to tell what it was like. An evil odor and a sickening 
pain combined might be a symbol of the torture. As is 
in the nature of dreams, possibly I lay but a little second 
on the rack, yet an age seemed shot through and 
through with the burning meshes of that crime, while, 
cowering and terror-stricken, I tossed about the loath- 
some fact in my mind. I had done it, and from the 
done there was no escape : it was forevermore a thing 


43^ 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


done. . . . Came a sudden change : I awoke. The 

sun stained with glory the curtains of my room, and the 
light of life darted keen as an arrow into my very soul. 
Glory to God ! I was innocent ! The stone was rolled 
from my sepulchre. With the darkness whence it had 
sprung, the cloud of my crime went heaving lurid away. 

I was a creature of the light and not of the dark. For 
me the sun shone and the wind blew ; for me the sea 
roared and the flowers sent up their odors. For me the 
earth had nothing to hide. My guilt was wiped away ; 
there was no red worm gnawing at my heart ; I could 
look my neighbor in the face, and the child of my friend 
might lay his hand in mine and not be defiled ! All day 
long the joy of that deliverance kept surging on in my 
soul. 

“ But something yet more precious, more lovely than 
such an awaking, will repentance be to the sinner ; for 
after all it was but a dream of the night from which that 
set me free, and the spectre-deed that vanished had never 
had a place in the world of fact ; while the horror from 
which repentance delivers is no dream, but a stubborn, 
abiding reality. Again, the vanishing vision leaves the 
man what he was before, still capable, it maybe, of com- 
mitting the crime from which he is not altogether clean to 
whom in his sleep it was possible : repentance makes of 
the man a new creature, one who has awaked from the 
sleep of sin to sleep that sleep no more. The change in 
the one case is not for greatness comparable with that in 
the other. The sun that awakes from the one sleep is 
but the outward sun of our earthly life — a glorious, 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


439 


indeed, and lovely thing, which yet even now is gathering 
a crust of darkness, blotting kself out and vanishing. 
The sun that awakes a man from the sleep of death is the 
living Sun that casts from his thought out into being 
that other sun, with the space wherein it holds its plan- 
etary court — the Father of lights, before whose shining 
in the inner world of truth eternal even the deeds of 
vice become as spectral dreams, and, with the night of 
godlessness that engendered them, flee away. 

“ But a man may answer and say to me, ‘ Thou art 
but borne on the wings of thine imagination. The fact 
of the crime remains, let a man tear out his heart in re- 
pentance ; and no awaking can restore an innocence 
which is indeed lost.’ I answer : The words thou 
speakest are in themselves true, yet thy ignorance 
makes them false. Thou knowest not the power of 
God, nor what resurrection from the dead means. What 
if, while it restored not thy former innocence, it brought 
thee a purity by the side of whose white splendor and 
inward preciousness the innocence thou hadst lost was 
but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in 
the first furnace of its temptation ? Innocence is indeed 
priceless — that innocence which God counteth inno- 
cence — but thine was a flimsy shoW, a bit of polished and 
cherished glass, instead of which, if thou repentest, 
thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy 
purity, O fair Psyche of the social world, upon whose 
wings no spattering shower has yet cast an earthy 
stain, and who knowest not yet whether there be any 
such thing as repentance or need of the same ! — is thy 


440 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


purity to compare with the purity of that heavenly 
Psyche, twice born, who 'even now in the twilight slum- 
bers of heaven dreams that she washes with her tears 
the feet of her Lord, and wipes them with the hairs of 
hei head ? O bountiful God, who wilt give us back even 
our innocence ten-fold ! He can give an awaking that 
leaves the past of the soul ten times farther behind 
than ever waking from sleep left the dreams of the 
night. 

“ If the potency of that awaking lay in the inrush of a 
new billow of life fresh from its original source, carrying 
with it an enlargement of the whole nature and its every 
part, a glorification of every faculty, every sense even, 
so that the man, forgetting nothing of his past or its 
shame, should yet cry out in the joy of his second birth, 

‘ Lo ! I am a new man ; I am no more he who did that 
awful and evil thing, for I am no more capable of doing 
it ! God be praised, for all is well ! ’ — would not such 
an awaking send the past afar into the dim distance of the 
first creation, and wrap the ill deed in the clean linen 
cloth of forgiveness, even as the dull creature of the sea 
rolls up the grain of intruding sand in the lovely gar- 
ment of a pearl ? Such an awaking means God himself 
in the soul, not disdaining closest vital company with 
the creature he foresaw and created. And the man 
knows in full content that he is healed of his plague. 
Nor would he willingly lose the scars which record its 
outbreak, for they tell him what he is without God, and 
set him ever looking to see that the door into the hea- 
venly garden stand wide for God to enter the house 


A SERMON TO LEOPOLD. 


441 


when it pleases him. And who can tell whether in the 
train of such an awaking may not follow a thousand op- 
portunities and means of making amends to those whom 
he has injured ? 

“ Nor must I fail to remind the man who has cbm. 
mitted no grievous crime, that except he has repented 
of his evil self and abjured all wrong, he is not safe 
from any even the worst offence. There was a time 
when I could not understand that he who loved not his 
brother was a murderer : now I see it to be no figure of 
speech, but, in the realities of man’s moral and spiritual 
nature, an absolute simple fact. The murderer and the 
unloving sit on the same bench before the judge of 
eternal truth. The man who loves not his brother I do 
not say is at this moment capable of killing him, but if 
the natural working of his unlove be not checked, he 
will assuredly become capable of killing him. Until we 
love our brother — yes, until we love our enemy, who is 
yet our brother — we contain within ourselves the unde- 
veloped germ of murder. And so with every sin in the 
tables or out of the tables. There is not one in this con- 
gregation who has a right to cast a look of reproach at 
the worst felon who ever sat in the prisoner’s dock. I 
speak no hyperbole, but simple truth. We are very 
ready to draw in our minds a distinction between re- 
spectable sins— human imperfections we call them, per- 
haps — and disreputable vices, such as theft and murder; 
but there is no such distinction in fact. Many a thief is 
a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer 
to the gate of the kingdom. The heavenly order goes 


442 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


upon other principles than ours, and there are first that 
shall be last, and last that shall be first. Only, at the 
root of all human bliss lies repentance. 

“ Come then at the call of the Waker, the Healer, the 
Giver of repentance and light, the Friend of publicans 
and sinners, all ye on whom lies the weight of a sin or 
the gathered heap of a thousand crimes ! He came to 
call such as you that he might make you clear and 
clean. He can not bear that you should live on in such 
misery, such badness, such blackness of darkness. He 
would give you again your life, the bliss of your being. 
He will not speak to you one word of reproach, except, 
indeed, you should aim at justifying yourselves by ac- 
cusing your neighbor. He will leave it to those who 
cherish the same sms in their hearts to cast stones at 
you : he who has no sin casts no stone. Heartily he 
loves you, heartily he hates the evil in you — so heartily 
that he will even cast you into the fire to burn you 
clean. By making you clean he will give you rest. If 
he upbraid, it will not be for past sin, but for the present 
little faith, holding out to him an acorn-cup to fill. 
The rest of you, keep aloof, if you will, until you 
shall have done some deed that compels you to cry out 
for deliverance ; but you that know yourselves sinners, 
come to him that he may work in you his perfect work, 
for he came not to call the righteous, but sinners — us, 
you and me — to repentance.” 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 


-AFTER THE SERMON. 

S the sermon drew to a close, and the mist of 
his emotion began to disperse, individual 
faces of his audience again dawned out on 
the preacher’s ken. Mr. Drew’s head was 
down. As I have alreadv said, certain things he had been 
taught in his youth and had practised in his manhood, 
certain mean ways counted honest enough in the trade, 
had become to him, regarded from the ideal point of the 
divine in merchandise — such a merchandise, namely, as 
the share the Son of Man might have taken in buying 
and selling, had his reputed father been a shopkeeper 
instead of a carpenter — absolutely hateful, and the mem- 
ory of them intolerable. Nor did it relieve him much to 
remind himself of the fact that he knew not to the full 
the nature of the advantages he took, for he knew that he 
had known them such as shrank from the light, not com- 
ing thereto to be made manifest. He was now doing his 
best to banish them from his business, and yet they were 
a painful presence to his spirit — so grievous to be borne 



444 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


that the prospect held out by the preacher of an abso- 
lute and final deliverance from them, by the indwelling 
presence of the God of all living men and true mer- 
chants, was a blessedness unspeakable. Small was the 
suspicion in the Abbey Church of Glaston, that morn- 
ing, that the well-known successful man of business was 
weeping. Who could once have imagined another reason 
for the laying of that round, good-humored, contented 
face down on the book-board than pure drowsiness from 
lack of work-day interest ? Yet there was a human soul 
crying out alter its birthright. Oh ! to be clean as a 
mountain river ! clean as the air above the clouds or 
on the middle seas ! as the throbbing aether that fills 
the gulf betwixt star and star ! — nay, as the thought of 
the Son of Man himself, who, to make all things new 
and clean, stood up against the whole battery of sin- 
sprung suffering, withstanding and enduring and stilling 
the recoil of the awful force w'herewith his Father had 
launched the worlds, and given birth to human souls with 
wills that might become free as his own. 

While Wingfold had been speaking in general terms, 
with the race in his mind’s, and the congregation in his 
body’s eye, he had yet thought more of one soul, with its 
one crime and its intolerable burden, than of all the rest : 
Leopold was ever present to him, and while he strove 
to avoid absorption in a personal interest however justi- 
fiable, it was of necessity that the thought of the most 
burdened sinner he knew should color the whole of his 
utterance. At times, indeed, he felt as if he were speak- 
ing to him immediately, and to him only; at others, al- 


AFTER THE SERMON. 


445 


though then he saw her no more than him, that he was 
comforting the sister individually, in holding out to her 
brother the mighty hope of a restored purity. And 
when once more his mind could receive the messages 
brought home by his eyes, he saw upon Helen’s face the 
red sunset of a rapt listening. True, it was already fad- 
ing away, but the eyes had wept, the glow yet hung 
about cheek and forehead, and the firm mouth had 
forgotten itself into a tremulous form, which the still- 
ness of absorption had there for the moment fixed. 

But even already, although he could not yet read it 
upon her countenance, a snake had begun to lift its head 
from the chaotic swamp which runs a creek at least into 
every soul, the rudimentary desolation, a remnant of 
the time when the world was without form and void. 
And the snake said, “ Why then did he not speak like 
that to my Leopold ? Wh}'- did he not comfort him with 

such a good hope, well becoming a priest of the gentle 
Jesus. ^ Or, if he fancied he must speak of confession, 
why did he not speak of it in plain, honest terms, 
instead of suggesting the idea of it so that the poor boy 
imagined it came from his own spirit, and must there- 
fore be obeyed as the will of God }” 

So said the snake ; and by the time Helen had walked 
home with her aunt, the glow had sunk from her soul, 
and a gray, wintry mist had settled down upon her spir- 
it. And she said to herself that if this last hope in 
George should fail her, she would not allow the matter 
to trouble her any further ; she was a free woman, and, 
as Leopold had chosen other counsellors, had thus de-. 


446 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


dared her unworthy of confidence, and, after all that 
.she had suffered and done for love of him, had turned 
away from her, she would put money in her purse, set 
out for France or Italy, and leave liim to the fate, 
whatever it might be, which his new advisers and his 
own obstinacy might bring upon him. Was the innocent 
bound to share the shame of the guilty } Had she not 
done enough ? Would even her father require more of 
her than she had already done and endured ? 

When, therefore, she went into Leopold’s room, and 
his eyes sought her from the couch, she took no notice 
that he had got up and dressed while she was at church ; 
and he knew that a cloud had come between them, and 
that after all she had borne and done for him, he and 
his sister were now farther apart, for the time at least, 
than when oceans lay betwixt their birth and their 
meeting ; and he found himself looking back with vague 
longing even to the terrible old house of Glaston, and 
the sharing of their agony therein. His eyes followed 
her as she walked across to the dressing-room, and the 
tears rose and filled them, but he said nothing. And the 
sister who, all the time of the sermon, had been filled with 
wave upon wave of wishing — that Poldie could hear this, 
could hear that, could have such a thought to comfort 
him, such a lovely word to drive the horror from his 
soul — now cast on him a chilly glance, and said never a 
word of the things to which she had listened with such 
heavingsot the spirit-ocean ; for she felt, with an instinct 
more righteous than her will, that they would but 
strengthen him in his determination to do whatever the 


AFTER THE SERMON, 


447 


teacher of them might approve. As she repassed him 
to go to the drawing-room, she did indeed say a word of 
kindness ; but it was in a forced tone, and was only 
about his dinner ! His eyes overflowed, but he shut his 
lips so tight that his mouth grew grim with determina- 
tion, and no more tears came. 

To the friend who joined her at the church-door, and, 
in George Bascombe's absence, walked with them 
along Pine street, Mrs. Ramshorn remarked that the 
curate was certainly a most dangerous man — particular- 
ly for young people to hear — he so confounded all the 
landmarks of right and wrong, representing the honest 
man as no better than the thief, and the murderer as 
no worse than anybody else — teaching people, in 
fact, that the best thing they could do was to commit 
some terrible crime, in order thereby to attain to a better 
innocence than without it could ever be theirs. How 
far she mistook, or how far she knew or suspected that 
she spoke falsely, I will not pretend to know. But 
although she spoke as she did, there was something, 
either in the curate or in the sermon, that had quieted 
her a flttle, and she was less contemptuous in her con- 
demnation of him than usual. 

Happily both for himself and others, the curate was 
not one of those who cripple the truth and blind then 
own souls by 

some craven scruple 

Of thinking too precisely on the event — 

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, 
And ever three parts coward ; 


448 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


and hence, in proportion as he roused the honest, he 
gave occasion to the dishonest to cavil and condemn. 
Imagine St. Paul having a prevision of how he would be 
misunderstood, and heeding it ! — what would then have 
become of all those his most magnificent outbursts}* 
And would any amount of apostolic carefulness have 
protected him ? I suspect it would only have given rise 
to more vulgar misunderstandings and misrepresenta- 
tions still. To explain to him who loves not, is but to give 
him the more plentiful material for misinterpretation; 
Let a man have truth in the inward parts, and out of 
the abundance of his heart let his mouth speak. If then 
he should have ground to fear honest misunderstanding, 
let him preach again to enforce the truth for which he 
is jealous, and if it should seem to any that the two ut- 
terances need reconciling, let those who would have 
them consist reconcile them for themselves. 

The reason of George Bascombe’s absence from 
church that morning was that, after an early breakfast, 
he had mounted Helen’s mare and set out to call on 
Mr. Hooker before he should have gone to church. 
Helen expected him back to dinner, and was anxiously 
looking for him. So also was Leopold, but the hopes of 
the two were different. 

At length the mare’s hoofs echoed through all Sunday 
Glaston, and presently George rode up. The groom 
took his hoise in the street, and he came into the draw- 
ing-room. Helen hastened to meet him. 

“ Well, George ?” she said anxiously. 

“ Oh ! it’s all right J— will be at least, I am sure. I will 


AFTER THE SERMON. 


449 


tell you all about it in the garden after dinner. Aunt 
has the good sense never to interrupt us there,” he add- 
ed. “ I’ll just run and show myself to Leopold : he must 
not suspect I am of your party and playing him 
false. Not that it is false, you know ! for two negatives 
make a positive, and to fool a madman is to give him 
fair play.” 

The words jarred sorely on Helen’s ear. 

Bascombe hurried to Leopold and informed him that 
he had seen Mr. Hooker, and that all was arranged for 
taking him over to his place on Tuesday morning, if by 
that time he should be able for the journey. 

“ Why not to-morrow ?” said Leopold. I am quite 
able.” 

“ Oh ! I told him you were not very strong. And he 
wanted a run after the hounds to-morrow. So we judged 
it better put off till Tuesday.” 

Leopold gave a sigh, and said no more. 


CHAPTER LXIX. 


BASCOMBE AND THE MAGISTRATE. 

FTER dinner the cousins went to the summer- 
house, and there George gave Helen his re- 
port, revealing his plan and hope for Leo- 
pold. 

“ Such fancies must be humored, you know, Helen 
There is nothing to be gained by opposing them,” he 
said. 

Helen looked at him with keen eyes, and he returned 
the gaze. The confidence betwixt them was not per- 
fect : each was doubtful as to the thought of the other, 
and neither asked what it was. 

“ A fine old cock is Mr. Hooker !” said George ; “ a jol- 
ly, good-natured, brick-faced squire ; a Tory, of course, 
and a sound churchman ; as simple as a baby, and took 
everything I told him without a hint of doubt or objec- 
tion — just the sort of man I expected to find him ! 
When I mentioned my name, etc., he found he had 
known my father, and that gave me a good start. Then 



BASCOMBE AND THE MAGISTRATE. 


451 


1 lauded his avenue, and apologized for troubling him so 
early and on Sunday too, but said it was a pure work of 
mercy in which I begged his assistance — as a magis- 
trate, I added, lest he should fancy I had come at 
ter a subscription. It was a very delicate case, I said, in 
which were concerned the children of a man of whom he 
had, I believed, at one time known something — General 
Lingard. ‘To be sure!’ he cried; ‘I knew him very 
well ; a fine fellow, but hasty, sir — hasty in his temper ! ’ 
I said I had never known him myself, but one of his 
children was my cousin ; the other was the child of his 
second wife, a Hindoo lady, unfortunately, and it was 
about him I presumed to trouble him. Then I plunged 
into the matter at once, telling him that Leopold had had 
violent brain-fever, brought on by a horrible drug the 
use of which, if use I dared call it, he had learned in In- 
dia ; and that, although he had recovered from the fever, 
it was very doubtful if ever he would recover from the 
consequences of it, for that he had become the prey of a 
fixed idea, the hard deposit from a heated imagination. 
‘ And pray what is the idea } ’ he asked. ‘ Neither 
more nor less,’ I answered, ‘ than that he is a murder- 
er I ’ — ‘ God bless me ! ’ he cried, somewhat to my 
alarm, for I had been making all this preamble to preju- 
dice the old gentleman in the right direction, lest after- 
wards Leopold’s plausibility might be too much for him. 
So I echoed the spirit of his exclamation, declaring it 
w'as one of the saddest things I had ever known, that a 
fellow of such sweet and gentle nature, one utterly in- 
capable of unkindness, not to say violence, should be 


452 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


SO possessed by misery and remorse for a phantom deed, 
no more his than if he had but dreamed it, a thing he 
not only did not do, but never could have done. I had 
not yet, however, told him, I said, what was perhaps the 
saddest point in the whole sad story — namely, that the 
attack had been brought on by the news of the actual 
murder of a lady to whom he had been passionately at- 
tached ; the horror of it had unhinged his reason, then 
turned and fastened upon his imagination ; so that he 
was now convinced, beyond the reach of argument or 
even the clearest proof, that it was his own hand that 
drove the knife to her heart. Then I recalled to his 
memory the case as reported, adding that the fact of the 
murderer’s prolonged evasion of justice appeared, by 
some curious legerdemain of his excited fancy, if not to 
have suggested — of that I was doubtful — yet to have 
ripened his conviction of guilt. Now nothing would 
serve him but he must give himself up, confess — no, 
that was not a true word in his case — accuse himself 
of the crime, and meet his fate on the gallows, ‘ in the 
hope, observe, my dear sir,’ I said, ‘ of finding her in 
the other world, and there making it up with her ! ’ 
‘ God bless me ! ’ he cried again, in a tone of absolute 
horror. And every now and then, while I spoke, he 
would ejaculate something ; and still as he listened, his 
eyes grew more and more bloodshot with interest and 
compassion. ‘ Ah, I see ! ’ he said then ; ‘ you want 
to send him to a mad-house. Don’t do it,’ he contin- 
ued, in a tone of expostulation, almost entreaty. ‘ Poor 
boy ! He may get over it. Let his friends look to him 


BASCOMBE AND THE MAGISTRATE. 


453 


He has a sister, you say ? ’ I quickly reassured him, 
telling him such was no one’s desire, and saying I would 
come to the point in a moment, only there was one thing 
more which had interested me greatly, as revealing how 
a brain in such a condition will befool itself, all but gen- 
erating two individualities. There I am afraid I put my 
foot in it, but he was far too simple to see it was cloven 
— ha ! ha ! — and I hastened to remark that, as a magis- 
trate, he must have had numberless opportunities of 
noting similar phenomena. He waved his hand in dep- 
recation, and I hastened to remark that, up to a cer- 
tain point, whatever hint the newspapers had given, 
Leopold had expanded and connected with every other, 
but that at one part of the story I had found him entire- 
ly at fault : he could not tell what he did, where he 
went, or how he had felt first after the deed was done. 
He confessed all after that was a blank until he found 
himself in bed. But when I told him something he had 
not seen — which his worship might remember — the tes- 
timony, namely, of the coast-guardsman — about the fish- 
ing-boat with the two men in it — I had here to refresh 
his memory as to the whole of that circumstance, and 
did so by handing him the newspaper containing it— 
that was what I made you give me the paper for. I have 
lost the thread of my sentence, but never mind. I told 
him then something I have not told you yet, Helen— 
namely, that when I happened to allude to that portion 
of the story, Leopold started up with flashing eye^, and 
exclaimed. Now I remember ! It all comes back to 
me as clear as day. I remember running down the hill, 


454 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


and jumping into the boat just as they shoved off. I was 
exhausted and fell down in the stern. »When I came to 
myself, the two men were forward : I saw their legs 
through beneath the sails. I thought they would be 
sure to give me up, and at once I slipped overboard. 
The water revived me, but when I reached the shore I 
fell down again, and lay there I don’t know how long. 
Indeed I don’t remember any thing more except con- 
fusedly.’ That is what Leopold said, and what I now 
told Mr. Hooker. Then at last I opened my mind to him 
as to wherein I ventured to ask his assistance ; and my 
petition was that he would allow me to bring Leopold, 
and would let him go through the form of giving himself 
up to justice. Especially I begged that he would listen 
to all he had to say, and give no sign that he doubted 
his story. ‘And then, sir,’ I concluded, ‘I would 
leave it to you to do what we can not — reconcile him to 
going home instead of to prison.’ 

“ He sat with his head on his hand for a while, as if 
pondering some weighty question of law. Then he said 
suddenly, ‘ It is now almost church-time. I will think 
the matter over. You may rely upon me. Will you 
take a seat in my pew, and dine with us after .>’ I ex- 
cused myself on the ground that I must return at once 
to poor Leopold, who was anxiously looking for me. 
And you must forgive me, Helen, and not fancy me mis- 
using Fanny, if I did yield to the temptation of a little 
longer ride. I have scarcely more than walked her, 
with a canter now and then when we had the chance of 
a bit of turf.” 


BASCOMBE AND THE MAGISTRATE. 


455 


Helen assured him with grateful eyes that she knew 
Fanny was as safe with him as with herself, and she 
felt such a gush of gratitude follow the revival of hope, 
that she was nearer being in love with her cousin than 
ever before. Her gratitude inwardly delighted George, 
and he thought the light in her blue eyes lovelier than 
ever; but although strongly tempted, he judged it bet- 
ter to delay a formal confession until circumstances 
should be more comfortable. 


/ 


CHAPTER LXX. 


THE CONFESSION 


^LL that and the following day Leopold was in 
spirits for him wonderful. On Monday 
night there came a considerable reaction : he 
was dejected, worn, and weary. Twelve 
o’clock the next day was the hour appointed for their 
visit to Mr. Hooker, and at eleven he was dressed and 
ready — restless, agitated, and very pale, but not a whit 
less determined than at first. A drive was the pretext 
for borrowing Mrs. Ramshorn’s carriage. 

“ Why is Mr. Wingfold not coming.^” asked Lingard 
anxiously, when it began to move. 

“ I fancy we shall be quite as comfortable without him, 
Poldie,” said Helen. “ Did you expect him ?” 

“ He promised to go with me. But he hasn’t called 
since the time was fixed.” Here Helen looked out of 
the window. “ I can’t think why it is. 1 can do my du- 
ty without him, though,” continued Leopold, “and per- 
haps it is just as well. Do you know, George, since I 
made up my mind I have seen her but once, and that 
was last night, and only in a dream.” 

“A state of irresolution is one peculiarly open to un- 



THE CONFESSION. 


457 


healthy impressions,” said George, good-naturedly dis- 
posing of his long legs so that they should be out of the 
way. 

Leopold turned from him to his sister. 

“ The strange thing, Helen,” he said, “ was that I did 
not feel the least afraid of her, or even abashed before 
her. ‘I see you,’ I said. ‘Be at peace. I am com- 
ing ; and you shall do to me what you will.’ And then 
— what do you think ? — O my God ! she smiled one of 
her own old smiles — only sad, too, very sad — and vanish- 
ed. I woke, and she seemed only to have just left the 
room, for there was a stir in the darkness. Do you be- 
lieve in ghosts, George ?” 

Leopold was not one of George’s initiated, I need 
nardly say. 

“ No,” answered Bascombe. 

“ I don’t wonder. I can’t blame you, for neither did I 
once. But just wait till you have made one, George !” 

“ God forbid !” exclaimed Bascombe, a second time 
forgetting himself. 

“Amen!” said Leopold; “for after that there’s no 
help but be one yourself, you know.” 

“ If he would only talk like that to old Hooker !” 
thought George. “ It would go a long way to forestall 
any possible misconception of the case.” 

“ I can’t think why Mr. Wingfold did not come yes- 
terday,” resumed Leopold. “ I made sure he would.” 

“Now, Poldie, you mustn’t talk,” said Helen, “or 
you’ll be exhausted before we get to Mr. Hooker’s.” 

She did not wish the non-appearance of the curate on 


458 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Monday to be closely inquired into. His company at 
the magistrate’s was by all possible means to be avoided. 

George had easily persuaded Helen — more easily than 
he expected — to wait their return in the carriage, and 
the two men were shown into the library, where the 
magistrate presently joined them. He would have 
shaken hands with Leopold as well as George, but the 
conscious felon drew back. 

“ No, sir ; excuse me,” he said. “ Hear what I have to 
tell you first ; and if after that you will shake hands 
with me, it will be a kindness indeed. But you will not ! 
you will not !” 

Worthy Mr. Hooker was overwhelmed with pity at 
sight of the worn, sallow face with the great eyes, in 
which he found every appearance confirmatory of the 
tale wherewith Bascombe had filled and prejudiced every 
fibre of his judgment. He listened in the kindest way 
while the poor boy forced the words of his confession 
from his throat. But Leopold never dreamed of attrib^ 
uting his emotion to any other cause than compassion 
for one who had been betrayed into such a crime. It 
was against his will — for he seemed now bent, even to 
unreason, on fighting every weakness — that he was pre- 
vailed upon to take a little wine. Having ended, he sat 
silent, in the posture of one whose wrists are already 
clasped by the double bracelet of steel. 

Now Mr. Hooker had thought the thing out in church 
on the Sunday ; and after a hard run at the taU of a 
strong fox over a rough country on the Monday, and a 


THE CONFESSION. 


459 


good sleep well into the morning of the Tuesday, could 
see no better way. His device was simple enough. 

“ My dear young gentleman,” he said, “ I am very 
sory for you, but I must do my duty.” 

“That, sir, is what 1 came to you for,” answered 
Leopold humbly. 

“ Then you must consider yourself my prisoner. The 
moment you are gone, I shall makes notes of your de- 
position, and proceed to arrange for the necessary form- 
alities. As a mere matter of form, I shall take your own 
bail in a thousand pounds to surrender when called up- 
on.” 

“ But I am not of age, and haven’t got a thousand 
pounds,” said Leopold. 

“ Perhaps Mr. Hooker will accept my recognizance in 
the amount ?” said Bascombe. 

“Certainly,” answered Mr. Hooker, and wrote some- 
thing which Bascombe signed. 

“You are very good, George,” said Leopold. “But 
you know I can’t run away if I would,” he added, with a 
pitiful attempt at a smile. 

“ I hope you will soon be better,” said the magistrate 
kindly. 

“Why such a wish, sir?” returned Leopold, almost 
reproachfully, and the good man stood abashed before 
him. 

He thought of it afterwards, and was puzzled to know 
how it was. 

“ You must hold yourself in readiness,” he said, re- 
covering himself with an effort, “ to give youi^self up at 


460 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


any moment. And, remember, I shall call upon you 
when I please, every week perhaps, or oftener, to see that 
you are safe. Your aunt is an old friend of mine, and 
there will be no need of explanations. This turns out 
to be no common case, and after hearing the whole, I 
do not hesitate to offer you my hand.” 

Leopold was overcome by his kindness, and withdrew 
speechless, but greatly relieved. 

Several times during the course of his narrative, its ap" 
parent truthfulness and its circumstantiality went nigh 
to stagger Mr. Hooker; but a glance at Bascombe’s 
face, with its half-amused smile, instantly set him right 
again, and he thought with dismay how near he had 
been to letting himself be fooled by a madman. 

Again in the carriage, Leopold laid his head on Hel- 
en’s shoulder, and looked up in her face with such a smile 
as she had never seen on his before. Certainly there 
was something in confession — if only enthusiasts like 
Mr. Wingfold would not spoil all by pushing things to 
extremes and turning good into bad ! 

Leopold was yet such a child, had so little occu- 
pied himself with things about him, and had been so en- 
tirely taken up with his passion and the poetry of exis- 
tence unlawfully forced, that if his knowledge of the cir- 
cumstances of Emmeline’s murder had depended on the 
newspapers, he would have remained in utter ignorance 
concerning them. From the same causes he was so en- 
tirely unacquainted with the modes of criminal proce- 
dure, that the conduct of the magistrate never struck 
him as strange, not to say illegal. And so strongly did 


THE CONFESSION. 


461 


he feel the good man’s kindness and sympathy, that his 
comfort from making a clean breast of it was even great- 
er than he had expected. Before they reached home he 
was fast asleep. When laid on his couch, he almost 
instantly fell asleep again, and Helen saw him smile as 
he slept. 


CHAPTER LXXI. 


THE MASK. 

UT although such was George Bascombe’s 
judgment of Leopold, and such his conduct of 
his affair, he could not prevent the recurrent 
intrusion of the flickering doubt which had 
shown itself when first he listened to the story. Amid 
all the wildness of the tale there was yet a certain air 
not merely of truthfulness in the narrator — that was not 
to be questioned — but of verisimilitude in the narration, 
which had its effect, although it gave rise to no con- 
scious exercise of discriminating or ponderating faculty. 
Leopold’s air of conviction also, although of course 
that might well accompany the merest invention 
rooted in madness, yet had its force, persistently as 
George pooh-poohed it — which he did the more strenu- 
ously from the intense, even morbid, abhorrence of his 
nature to being taken in, and having to confess himself 
of unstable intellec ual equilibrium. Possibly this was 
not the only kind of thing in which the sensitiveness of 
a vanity he would himself have disowned, had rendered 



THE MASK. 


463 


him unfit for perceiving the truth. Nor do I know how 
much there may be to choose between the two shames 
— that of accepting what is untrue and that of refusing 
what is true. 

The second time he listened to Leopold’s continuous 
narrative, the doubt returned with more clearness 
and less flicker ; there was such a thing as being 
overwise ; might he not be taking himself in with his 
own incredulity? Ought he not to apply some test ? 
And did Leopold’s story offer any means of doing so ? 
One thing, he then found, had been dimly haunting 
his thoughts ever since he heard it: Leopold affirmed 
that he had thrown his cloak and mask down an old pit- 
shaft, close by the place of murder. If there was 
such a shaft, could it be searched ? Recurring 
doubt at length so wrought upon his mind that he 
resolved to make his holiday excursion to that neigh- 
borhood, and there endeavor to gain what assurance 
of any sort might be to be had. What end beyond 
his own possible satisfaction the inquiry was to an- 
swer he did not ask himself. The restless spirit of 
the detective, so often conjoined with indifference to 
what is in its own nature true, was at work in him ; but 
that was not all ; he must know the very facts, if possi- 
ble, of whatever concerned Helen. I shall not follow 
his proceedings closely : it is with their reaction upon 
Leopold that I have to do. 

The house where the terrible thing took place was 
not far from a little moorland village. There Bascombe 
found a small inn, where he took up his quarters, pre- 


464 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


tending to be a geologist out for a holiday. He soon 
came upon the disused shaft. 

The inn was a good deal frequented in the evenings by 
the colliers of the district — a rough race, but not beyond 
the influences of such an address, minglecf of self-asser- 
tion and good-fellowship, as Bascornbe brought to bear 
upon them, for he had soon perceived that amongst 
them he might find the assistance he wanted. In the 
course of conversation, therefore, he mentioned the 
shaft, on which he pretended to have come in his ram- 
bles. Remarking on the danger of such places, he 
learned that this one served for ventilation, and was 
still accessible below from other workings. There- 
after he begged permission to go down one of the pits, 
on pretext of examining the coal-strata, and having se- 
cured for his guide one of the most intelligent of those 
whose acquaintance he had made at the inn, persuaded 
him, partly by expressions of incredulity because of the 
distance between, to guide him to the bottom of the 
shaft whose acessibility he maintained. That they were 
going in the right direction, he had the testimony of a 
little compass he carried at his watch-chain, and at length 
he saw a faint gleam before him. When at last he raised 
his head, wearily bent beneath the low roofs of the pas- 
sages, and looked upwards, there was a star looking 
down at him out of the sky of day ! But George never 
wasted time in staring at what was above his head, and 
so began instantly to search about as if examining the 
indications of the strata. Was it possible ! Could it be } 
There was a piece of black something that was not coal 


THE MASK. 


465 


and seemed textile ! It was a half-mask, for there were 
the eyeholes in it ! He caught it up and hurried it into 
his bag — not so quickly but that the haste set his guide 
speculating. And Bascombe saw that the action was 
noted. The man afterwards offered to carry his bag, 
but he would not allow him. 

The next morning he left the place and returned to 
London, taking Glaston, by a detour, on his way. A 
few questions to Leopold drew from him a description 
of the mask he had worn, entirely corresponding with 
the one George had found ; and at length he was satis- 
fied that there was truth more than a little in Leopold’s 
confession. It was not his business, however, he now said 
to himself, to set magistrates right. True, he had set Mr. 
Hooker wrong in the first place, but he had done it in 
good faith, and how could he turn traitor to Helen and 
her brother ? Besides, he was sure the magistrate him- 
self would be any thing but obliged to him for opening 
his eyes ! At the same time, Leopold’s fanatic eager- 
ness after confession might drive the matter further, and 
if so, it might become awkward for him. He might be 
looked to for the defence, and were he not certain that 
his guide had marked his concealment of what he had 
picked up, he might have ventured to undertake it, for 
certainly it would have been a rare chance for a display of 
the forensic talent he believed himself to possess; but is 
it was, the moment he was called to the bar — which would 
be within a fortnight— he would go abroad, say to Paris, 
and there, for twelve months or so, await events. 

When he disclosed to Helen his evil success in the 


466 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


coal-pit, it was but the merest film of a hope it destroyed, 
for she kneiv that her brother was guilty. George 
and she now felt that they were linked by the posses- 
sion of a common secret. 

But the cloak had been found a short time before, and 
was in the possession of Emmeline’s mother. That 
mother was a woman of strong passions and determined 
character. The first shock of the catastrophe over, her 
grief was almost supplanted by a rage for vengeance, in 
the compassing of which no doubt she vaguely imag- 
ined she would be doing something to right her daugh- 
ter. Hence the protracted concealment of the murderer 
was bitterness to her soul, and she vowed herself to dis- 
covery and revenge as the one business of her life. In 
this her husband, a good deal broken by the fearful 
event, but still more by misfortunes of another kind 
which had begun to threaten him, offered her no assist- 
ance, and indeed felt neither her passion urge him nor 
her perseverance hold him to the pursuit. 

In the neighborhood her mind was well known, and 
not a few found their advantage in supplying her pas- 
sion with the fuel of hope. Any hint of evidence, how- 
ever small, the remotest suggestion even towards dis- 
covery, they would carry at once to her ; for she was an 
open-handed woman, and in such case would give with 
a profusion that, but for the feeling concerned, would 
have been absurd, and did expose her to the greed of 
every lying mendicant within reach of her. Not unnatu- 
rally, therefore, it had occurred to a certain collier to 
make his way to the bottom of the shaft, on the chance 


THE MASK. 


467 


— hardly of finding, but of being enabled to invent some- 
thing worth reporting ; and there, to the very fooling 
of his barren expectation, he had found the cloak. 

The mother had been over to Holland, where she had 
instituted unavailing inquiries in the villages along the 
coast and among the islands, and had been home but a 
few days when the cloak was carried to her. In her 
mind it immediately associated itself with the costumes of 
the horrible ball, and at once she sought the list of her 
guests thereat. It was before her at the very moment 
when the man who had been Bascombe’s guide sent in 
to request an interview, the result of which was to turn 
her attention for the time in another direction : Who 
might the visitor to the mine have been? 

Little was to be gathered in the neighborhood be- 
yond the facts that the letters G B were on liis carpet- 
bag, and that a scrap of torn envelope bore what seemed 
the letters mple. She despatched the poor indications 
to an inquiry-office in London. 


CHAPTER LXXII. 


FURTHER DECISION 

HE day after his confession to Mr. Hooker, a 
considerable reaction took place in Lingard. 

He did not propose to leave his bed, and lay 

0 

exhausted. He said he had caught cold. He 
coughed a little ; wondered why Mr. Wingfold did not 
come to see him ; dozed a good deal, and often woke 
with a start. Mrs. Ramshorn thought Helen ought 
to make him get up : nothing, she said, could be worse 
for him than lying in bed; but Helen thought, even if 
her aunt were right, he must be humored. The follow- 
ing day Mr. Hooker called, inquired after him, and went 
up to his room to see him. There he said all he could 
think of to make him comfortable ; repeated that cer- 
tain preliminaries had to be gone through before the 
commencement of the prosecution ; said that while 
these went on, it was better he should be in his sis- 
ter’s care than in prison, where, if he went at once, he 
most probably would die before the trial came on ; that 
in the meantime he was responsible for him ; that, al- 
though he had done quite right in giving himself up, he 




FURTHER DECISION. 


469 


must not let what was done and could no more be 
helped prey too much upon his mind, lest it should 
render him unable to give his evidence with proper 
clearness, and he should be judged insane and sent to 
Broadmoor, which would be frightful. He ended by 
saying that he had had great provocation, and that he 
was certain the judge would consider it in passing sen- 
tence, only he must satisfy the jury there had been no 
premeditation. 

“ I will not utter a word to excuse myself, Mr. Hook- 
er,” replied Leopold. 

The worthy magistrate smiled sadly, and went away, 
if possible more convinced than ever of the poor lad’s 
insanity. 

The visit helped Leopold over that day, but when the 
next also passed, and neither did Wingfold appear nor 
any explanation of his absence reach him, he made up 
his mind to act again for himself. 

The cause of the curate’s apparent neglect, though ill 
to find, was not far to seek. 

On the Monday he had, upon some pretext or other, 
been turned away ; on the Tuesday he had been told 
Mr. Lingard was gone for a drive ; on the Wednesday, 
that he was much too tired to be seen ; and thereupon had 
at length judged it better to leave things to right them- 
selves. If Leopold did not want to see him, it would 
be of no use by persistence to force his way to him ; 
while, on the other hand, if he did want to see him, he 
felt convinced the poor fellow would manage to have 
bis own way somehow. 


470 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


The next morning after he had thus resolved, Leopold 
declared himself better, and got up and dressed. He 
then lay on the sofa and waited as quietly as he could 
until Helen went out — Mr. Faber insisting she should 
do so every day. It was no madness, but a burning 
desire for life, coupled with an utter carelessness of 
that which is commonly called life, that now ruled his 
behavior. He tied his slippers on his feet, put on his 
smoking-cap, crept unseen from the house, and took 
the direction of the Abbey. The influence of the air^ 
by his weakness rendered intoxicating, the strange look 
of every thing around him, the nervous excitement of 
every human approach, kept him up until he reached 
the churchyard, across which he was crawling to find 
the curate’s lodging, when suddenly his brain seemed to 
go swimming away into regions beyond the senses. 
He attempted to seat himself on a gravestone, but lost 
consciousness, and fell at full length between that and 
the next one. 

When Helen returned, she was horrified to find that 
he was gone — when or whither nobody knew : no one 
had missed him. Her first fear was the river, but her 
conscience enlightened her, and her shame could not 
prevent her from seeking him at the curate’s. In her 
haste she passed him where he lay. 

Shown into the curate’s study, she gave a hurried 
glance around, and her anxiety became terror again. 

“O Mr. Wingfold !” she cried, “ where is Leopold 

“ I have not seen him,” replied the curate, turning 
pale. 


FURTHER DECISION. 


471 


“ Then he has thrown himself in the river !” cried 
Helen, and sank on a chair. 

The curate caught up his hat. 

“ You wait here,” he said. “ I will go and look for 
him.” 

But Helen rose, and without another word they set 
off together, and again entered the churchyard. As they 
hurried across it, the curate caught sight of something 
on the ground, and springing forward, found Leopold. 

“ He is dead !” cried Helen in an agony, when she 
saw him stop and stoop. 

He looked dead indeed ; but what appalled her the 
most reassured WTngfold a little : blood had flowed 
freely from a cut on his eyebrow. 

The curate lifted him — no hard task — out of the damp 
shadow, and laid him on the stone, which was warm in 
the sun, with his head on Helen's lap, then ran to order 
the carriage, and hastened back with brandy. They got 
a little into his mouth, but he could not swallow it ; 
still it seemed to do him good, for presently he gave a 
deep sigh, and just then they heard the carriage stop at 
the gate. Wingfold took him up, carried him to it, got 
in with him in his arms, and held him on his knees until 
they reached the manor-house, when he carried him 
up-stairs and laid him on the sofa. When they had 
brought him round a little, he undressed him and put 
him to bed. 

“ Do not leave me,” murmured Leopold, just as Helen 
entered the room ; and she heard it. 

Wingfold looked to her for the answer he* was to 


4/2 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


make. Her bearing was much altered : she was both 
ashamed and humbled. 

“Yes, Leopold,” she said, “Mr. Wingfold will, I am 
sure, stay with you as long as he can.” 

“ Indeed I will,” assented the curate. “ But I must 
run for Mr. Faber first.” 

“ How did I come here ?’■ asked Leopold, opening his 
eyes large upon Helen after swallowing a spoonful of the 
broth she held to his lips. But before she could answer 
him he turned sick, and by the time the doctor came was 
very feverish. Faber gave the necessary directions, 
and Wingfold walked back with him to get his prescript 
tion made up. 


CHAPTER LXXIII. 

THE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR. 

HERE is something strange about that young 
man’s illness,” said Faber, as soon as they 
had left the house. “ I fancy you know- 
more than you can tell ; and if so, then I have 
committed no indiscretion in saying as much.” 

“ Perhaps it might be an indiscretion to acknowledge 
as much, however,” said the curate, with a smile. 

“ You are right. I have not been long in the place,” 
returned Faber, “ and you have had no opportunity of 
testing me. But I am indifferent honest as well as you, 
though I don’t go with you in every thing.” 

“ People would have me believe you don’t go with me 
in any thing.” 

“ They say as much, do they ?” returned Faber, with 
some annoyance. “ I thought I had been careful not to 
trespass on your preserves.” 

“ As for preserves, I don’t know of any,” answered the 
curate. “There is no true bird in the grounds that 



474 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


won’t manage somehow to escape the snare of the 
fowler.” 

“ Well,” said the doctor, “ I know nothing about God 
and all that kind of thing, but, though I don’t think I’m 
a coward exactly either, I know I should like to have 
your pluck.” 

“ I haven’t got any pluck,” said the curate. 

“Tell that to the marines,” said Faber. “ I daren’t go 
and say what I think or don’t think even in the 
bedroom of my least orthodox patient — at least, if I do, I 
instantly repent it — while you go on saying what you 
really believe Sunday after Sunday ! How you can be- 
lieve it I don’t know, and it’s no business of mine.” 

“ Oh! yes it is !” returned Wingfold. “ But as to the 
pluck, it may be a man’s duty to say in the pulpit what 
he would be just as wrong to say by a sick-bed.” 

“ That has nothing to do with the pluck ! That's all 
I care about.” 

“ It has every thing to do with what you take for 
pluck. My pluck is only Don Worm.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean by that.” 

“ It’s Benedick’s name, in Much Ado about Nothing 
for the conscience. My pluck is nothing but my con- 
science.” 

“ It’s a damned fine thing to have anyhow, whatever 
name you put upon it !” said Faber. 

“ Excuse me if I find your epithet more amusing than 
apt,” said Wingfold, laughing. 

“ You are quite right,” said Faber. “ I apologize.” 

“As to the pluck again,” Wingfold resumed, “ if you 


THE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR. 


475 


think of this one fact : that my whole desire is to be- 
lieve in God, and that the only thing I can be sure 
of sometimes is that, if there be a God, none but an 
honest man will ever find him : 3''ou will not then say 
there is much pluck in my speaking the truth ?” 

“ I don’t see that that makes it a hair easier, in the 
face of such a set of gaping noodles as — ” 

“ I beg your pardon : there is more lack of con- 
science than of brains in the Abbey of a Sunday, I fear.” 

“ Well, all I have to say is, I can’t for the life of me 
see what you want to believe in a God for ! It seems to 
me the world would go on rather better without any 
such fancy. Look here, now : there is young Spenser — 
out there at Horwood — a patient of mine. His wife died 
yesterday — one of the loveliest young creatures you ever 
saw. The poor fellow is as bad about it as fellow can 
be. Well, he’s one of your sort, and said to me the 
other day, just as you would have him, ‘ It’s the will of 
God, he said, ‘ and we must hold our peace.’ ‘ Don’t 
talk to me about God,’ I said, for I couldn’t stand it. 
‘ Do you mean to tell me that if there was a God, he" 
would have taken such a' lovely creature as that away 
from her husband and her helpless infant at the age of 
two-and-twenty ? I scorh-to believe it.’ ” 

“ What did he say to that ?’*■ ■ • . 

‘‘ He turned aS' white as death, and said never a word.” 
“ Ah l you forgot that you were taking from him his 
only hope of seeing her again !” 

“ I certainly did not think of that,” said Faber. ' ' 
‘‘Even then,” resumed-.Wingfold,. “H should not say 


476 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


you were wrong, if you were prepared to add that you 
had searched every possible region of existence, and 
had found no God ; or that you had tried every theory 
man had invented, or even that you were able to invent 
yourself, and had found none of them consistent with 
the being of a God. I do not say that then you would 
be right in your judgment, for another man, of equal 
weight, might have had a different experience. I only 
say I would not then blame you. But you must allow 
it a very serious thing to assert as a conviction, with- 
out such grounds as the assertor has pretty fully 
satisfied himself concerning, what could only drive the 
sting of death ten times deeper.” 

The doctor was silent. 

“ I doubt not you spoke in a burst of indignation ; but 
it seems to me the indignation of a man unaccustomed 
to ponder the things concerning which he expresses 
such a positive conviction.” 

“ You are wrong there,” returned Faber ; “for I was 
brought up in the straitest sect of the Pharisees, and 
know what I am saying.” 

“The straitest sect of the Pharisees can hardly be. 
the school in which to gather any such idea of a God as 
one could wish to be a reality.” 

“ They profess to know.’ 

“ Is that any argument of weight, they and their opin- 
ions being what they are ? If there be a God, do you 
imagine he would choose any strait sect under the sun 
to be his interpreters 

“ But the question is not of the idea of a God, but of the 


TKE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR. 


477 


existence of any, seeing, if he exists, he must be such as 
the human heart could never accept as God, inasmuch as 
he at least permits, if not himself enacts, cruelty. My 
argument to poor Spenser remains — however unwise or 
indeed cruel it may have been.” 

“ I grant it a certain amount of force — as much exact- 
ly as had gone to satisfy the children whom I heard the 
other day agreeing that Dr. Faber was a very cruel man, 
for he pulled out nurse’s tooth, and gave poor little 
baby such a nasty, nasty powder ! ” 

“ Is that a fair parallel ? I must look at it.” 

“ I think it is. What you do is often unpleasant, 
sometimes most painful, but it does not follow that you 
are a cruel man, and a hurter instead of a healer of men.” 

“ I think there is a fault in the analogy,” said Faber. 
“ For here am I nothing but a slave to laws already ex- 
isting, and compelled to work according to them. It is 
not my fault, therefore, that the remedies I have to use 
are unpleasant. But if there be a God, he has the mat- 
ter in bis own hands.” 

“ There is weight and justice in your argument, which 
may well make the analogy appear at first sight false. 
But is there no theory possible that should make it per- 
fect ?” 

“ I do not see how there should be any. For, if you 
say that God is under any such compulsion as I am 
under, then surely the house is divided against it- 
self, and God is not God any more.” 

“ For my part,” said the curate, " I think I cou/d be- 
lieve ill a God who did but his imperfect best : in one 


478 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


all power, and not all goodness, I could not believe. 
But suppose that the design of God involved the perfect- 
ing of men as the children of God — ‘ I said ye are gods ’ 
— that he would have them partakers of his own blessed- 
ness in kind — be as himself ; — suppose his grand idea 
could not be contented with creatures perfect only by his 
gift, so far as that should reach, and having no willing 
causal share in the perfection — -that is, partaking not at 
all of God’s individuality and free-will and choice of 
good ; — then suppose that suffering were the only way 
through which the individual soul could be set, in sepa- 
rate and self-individuality, so far apart from God that 
it might will^ and so become a partaker of his singleness 
and freedom ; and suppose that this suffering must be 
and had been initiated by God’s taking his share, and 
that the infinitely greater share ; suppose, next, that 
God saw the germ of a pure affection, say in your friend 
and his wife, but saw also that it was a germ so imper- 
fect and weak that it could not encounter the coming 
frosts and winds of the world without loss and decay, 
while, if they were parted now for a few years, it would 
grow and strengthen and expand to the certainty of an 
infinitely higher and deeper and keener love through 
the endless ages to follow — so that by suffering should 
come, in place of contented decline, abortion, and death, 
a troubled birth of joyous result in health and immor- 
tality ;~suppose all this, and what then 

Faber was silent a moment, and then answered, 

‘ “Your theory has but one fault: it is too good to 
be true.” ■ 


THE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR. 


“My theory leaves plenty of difficulty, but has =-no 
such fault as that. Why, what sort of a God would con- 
tent you, Mr. Faber ? The one idea is too bad, the oth- 
er too good, to be true. Must you expand and pare until 
you get one exactly to the measure of yourself ere you 
can accept it as thinkable or po.'isible } Why, a less God 
than that would not rest your soul a week. The only 
possibility of believing in a God seems to me to lie in 
finding an idea of a God large enough, grand enough, 
pure enough, lovely enough to be fit to believe ip.” 

“ And have you found such, may I ask ?” 

“ I think I am finding such.” 

“ Where ?” 

“ In the man of the New Testament. I have thought 
a little more about these things, I fancy, than you have, 
Mr. Faber : I may come to be sure of something; I don’t 
see how a man can ever be sure of nothing.” 

“ Don’t suppose me quite dumbfoundered, though I 
can’t answer you off-hand,” said Mr. Faber, as they 
reached his door. “Come in with me, and I will make 
up the medicine myself ; it will save time. There are a 
thousand difficulties,” he resumed in the surgery, “ some 
of them springing from peculiar points that come before 
one of my profession, which I doubt if you would be able 
to meet so readily. But about this poor fellow Lingard : 
know Glaston gossip says he is out of his mind.” 

“ If I were you, Mr. Faber, I would not take pains to 
contradict it. He is not out of his mind, but has such 
trouble in it as might well drive him out. Don’t you 
even hint at that, though.” 


480 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ I understand,” said Faber. 

“ If doctor and minister did understand each other and 
work together,” said Wingfold, “ I fancy a good deal 
more might be done.’’ 

“ I don’t doubt it. What sort of fellow is that cousin 
of theirs — Bascombe is his name, I believe }” 

“ A man to suit you, I should think,” said the curate ; 
“ a man with a most tremendous power of believing in 
nothing.” 

“ Come, come !” returned the doctor, “ you don’t know 
half enough about me to tell what sort of man I 
should like or dislike.” 

“Well, all I will say more of Bascombe is that if he 
were not conceited, he would be honest ; and if he were as 
honest as he believes himself, he would not be so ready 
to judge every one dishonest who does not agree with 
him.” 

“ I hope we may have another talk soon,” said the 
doctor, searching for a cork. “ Some day I may tell 
you a few things that may stagger you.” 

“ Likely enough : I am only learning to walk yet,” 
said Wingfold. “ But a man may stagger and not fall, 
and I am ready to hear any thing you choose to tell me.” 

Faber handed him the bottle, and he took his leave. 


CHAPTER LXXIV. 


HELEN AND THE CURATE. 



^^EFORE the morning, Leopold lay wound in 
the net of a low fever, almost as ill as ever, 
but with this difference, that his mind was 
far less troubled, and that even his most 
restless dreams no longer scared him awake to a still 
nearer assurance of misery. And yet many a time, as 
she watched by his side, it was excruciatingly plain to 
Helen that the stuff of which his dreams were made was 
the last process to the final execution of the law. She 
thought she could follow it all in his movements and 
the expressions of his countenance. At a certain point 
the cold dew always appeared on his forehead, after 
which invariably came a smile, and he would be quiet 
until near morning, when the same signs again appear- 
ed. Sometimes he would murmur prayers, and some- 
times it seemed to Helen that he must fancy himself 
talking face to face with Jesus, for the look of blessed 
and trustful awe upon his countenance was amazing in 
its beauty. 



482 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


For Helen herself, she was prey to a host of change- 
ful emotions. At one time she accused herself bitterly 
of having been the cause of the return of his illness . 
the next a gush of gladness would swell her heart at the 
thought that now she had him at least safer for a while, 
and that he might die and so escape the whole crowd of 
horrible possibilities. For George’s manipulation of the 
magistrate could but delay the disclosure of the truth ; 
even should no" discovery be made, Leopold must at 
length suspect a trick, and that would at once drive 
him to fresh action. 

, But amongst the rest, a feeling which had but lately 
begun to indicate its far-oh presence now threatened to 
bring with it a deeper and more permanent sorrow : it 
became more and more plain to her that she had taken 
the evil part against the one she loved best in the 
world ; that she had been as a Satan to him ; had driven 
him back, stood almost bodily in the way to turn him 
from the path of peace. Whether the path he had 
sought to follow was the only one or not, it was the 
only one he knew ; and that it was at least a true one 
was proved by the fact that he had already found in it 
the beginnings of the peace he sought ; while she, for 
the avoidance of shame and pity, for the sake of the fam- 
ily, as she had said to herself, had pursued a course 
which if successful would at best have resulted in shut- 
ting him up as in a madhouse with his own inborn 
horrors, with vain remorse, and equally vain longing. 
Her conscience, now that her mind was quieter, from 
the greater distance to which the threatening peril had 




HELEN AND THE CURATE. 


483 


again withdrawn, had taken the opportunity of speak- 
ing louder. And she listened, but still with one ques- 
tion ever presented : Why might he not appropriate the 
consolations of the gospel without committing the sui- 
cide of surrender.^ She could not see that confession 
was the very door of refuge and safety towards which 
he must press. 

George’s absence was now again a relier, and while 
she feared and shrank from the severity of Wingfold, 
she could not help a certain indescribable sense of safe- 
ty in his presence — at least so long as Leopold was too 
ill to talk. 

■ For the curate, he became more and more interested 
in the woman who could love so strongly and yet not 
entirely, who suffered and must still suffer so much, and 
whom a faith even no greater than his own might ren- 
der comparatively blessed. The desire to help her 
grew and grew in him, but he could see noway of reach- 
ing her. And then he began to discover one peculiar 
advantage belonging to the little open chamber of the 
pulpit — open not only or specially to heaven above, but 
to so many of the secret chambers of the souls of the 
congregation. For what a man dares not, could not if 
he dared, and dared not if he could, say to another even 
at the time and in the place fittest of all, he can say 
thence, open-faced, before the whole congregation, and 
the person in need thereof may hear it without umbrage 
or the choking husk of individual application, irritating 
to the, rejection of what truth may lie in it for him. 
Would that our pulpits were all in the power of such 


484 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


men as by suffering know the human, and by obedience* 
the divine heart ! Then would the office of instruction 
be no more mainly occupied by the press, but the faces 
of true men would everywhere be windows for the 
light of the Spirit to enter other men’s souls, and the 
voice of their words would follow with the forms of 
what truth they saw, and the power of the Lord would 
speed from heart to heart. Then would men soon un- 
derstand that not the form of even soundest words 
availeth any thing, but a new creature. 

When Wingfold was in the pulpit, then, he could speak 
as from the secret to the secret ; but elsewhere he felt, 
in regard to Helen, like a transport-ship filled with 
troops, which must go sailing around the shores of an 
invaded ally, in frustrate search for a landing. Oh ! to 
help that woman, that the light of life might go up in her 
heart and her cheek bloom again with the rose of 
peace ! But not a word could he speak in her presence, 
for he heard every thing he would have said as he 
thought it would sound to her, and therefore he had no 
utterance. Is it an infirmity of certain kinds of men, or 
a wise provision for their protection, that the brightest 
forms the truth takes in their private cogitations seem 
to lose half their lustre and all their grace when uttered 
in the presence of an unreceptive nature, and they hear, 
as it were, their own voice reflected in a poor, dull, in- 
harmonious echo, and are disgusted ? 

But, on the other hand, ever in the pauses of the 
rushing, ever in the watery gleams of life that broke 
through the clouds and drifts of the fever, Leopold 


HELEN AND THE CURATE. 


485 


sought his friend, and, finding him, shone into a brief 
radiance, or, missing him, gloomed back into the land of 
visions, The tenderness of the curate’s service, the 
heart that showed itself in every thing he did, even in 
the turn and expression of the ministering hand, was a 
kind of revelation to Helen. For while his intellect 
was hanging about the door, asking questions, and un- 
easily shifting hither and thither in its unloved per- 
plexities, the spirit of the Master had gone by it unseen, 
and entered into the chamber of his heart. 

After preaching the sermon last recorded, there came 
a reaction of doubt and depression on the mind of the 
curate, greater than usual. Had he hot gone farther 
than his right } Had he not implied more conviction 
than was his } Words could not go beyond his satisfac- 
tion with what he found in the gospel, or the hopes for 
the range of his conscious life springing therefrom, but 
was he not now making people suppose him more cer- 
tain of the fact of these things than he was ? He was 
driven to console himself with the reflection that so 
long as he had had no such intention, even if he had 
been so carried away by the delight of his heart as to give 
such an impression, it mattered little : what was it to 
other people what he believed or how he believed } If 
he had not been untrue to himself, no harm would fol- 
low. Was a man never to talk from the highest in him 
to the forgetting of the lower.? Was a man never to be 
carried beyond himself arid the regions of his knowledge ? 
If so, then farewell poetry and prophecy — yea, all grand 
discovery ! for things must be foreseen ere they can 


486 THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


be realized — apprehended ere they be comprehended. 
This much he could say for himself, and np more: that 
he was ready to lay down his life for the mere chance, if 
he might so use the word, of these things being true ; 
nor did he argue any devotion in that, seeing life with- 
out them would be to him a waste of unreality. He 
could bear witness to no facts, but to the truth, to the 
loveliness and harmony and righteousness and safe- 
ty that he saw in the idea of the Son of Man — as he 
read it in the story. He dared not say what, in a time 
of persecution, torture might work upon him, but he 
felt right hopeful that, even were he base enough to deny 
him, any cock might crow him back to repentance. At 
the same time he saw plain enough that even if he gave 
his body to be burned, it were no sufficing assurance of 
his Christianity : nothing could satisfy him of that less 
than the conscious presence of the perfect charity. 
Without that he was still outside the kingdom, wander- 
ing in a dream around its walls. 

Difficulties went on presenting themselves ; at times he 
would be whelmed in the tossing waves of contradiction 
and impossibility ; but still his head would come up into 
the air, and he would get a breath before he went down 
again. And with every fresh conflict, every fresh gleam 
of doubtful victory, the essential idea of the Master 
looked more and more lovely. And he began to see the 
working of his doubts on the growth of his heart and 
soul — both widening and realizing his faith, and pre- 
venting it from becoming faith in an idea of God instead 


HELEN AND THE CURATE. 


487 


of in the living God — the God beyond as well as in the 
heart that thought and willed and imagined. 

He had much time for reflection as he sat silent by the 
bedside of Leopold. Sometimes Helen would be sitting 
near, though generally when he arived she went out 
for her walk, but never anything came to him he could 
utter to her. And she was one of those who learn little 
from other people. A change must pass upon her ere 
she could be rightly receptive. Some vapor or other 
that clouded her being must be driven to the winds 
first. 

Mrs. Ramshorn had become at least reconciled to the 
frequent presence of the curate, partly from the testi- 
mony of Helen, partly from the witness of her own 
eyes to the quality of his ministrations. She was by no 
means one of the loveliest among women, yet she had a 
heart, and could appreciate some kinds of goodness 
which the arrogance of her relation to the church did 
not interfere to hide — for nothing is so deadening to the 
divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy 
things — and she became half friendly and quite courteous 
when she met the curate on the stair, and would now 
and then, when she thought of it, bring him a glass of 
wine as he sat by the bedside. 


CHAPTER LXXV. 


AN EXAMINATION. 

E acquaintance between the draper and the 
gate-keeper rapidly ripened into friendship. 
Very generally, as soon as he had shut his 
shop, Drew would walk to the park gate 
to see Polwarth ; and three times a week at least, the 
curate made one of the party. Much was then talked, 
more was thought, and, I venture to say, more yet was 
understood. 

One evening the curate went earlier than usual, and 
had tea with the Polwarth s. 

“ Do you remember,” he asked of his host, “ once 
putting to me the question, what our Lord came into 
this world for ?” 

“ I do,” answered Polwarth. 

“ And you remember I answered you wrong : I said it 
was to save the world 

“ I do. But remember, I said primarily ; for of course 
he did come to save the world.” 



AN EXAMINATION. 


489 


Yes, just so you put it. Well, I think I can answer 
the question correctly now ; and in learning the true 
answer, I have learned much. Did he not come first of 
all to do the will of his Father? Was not his Father, 
first with him always and in every thing — hisfellowmen 
next; for they were his Father’s ?” 

“ I need not say it — you know that you are right. 
Jesus is tenfold a real person to you, is he not, since you 
discovered that truth ?” 

“ I think so ; I hope so. It does seem as if a grand, 
simple reality had begun to dawn upon me out of the 
fog — the form as of a man pure and simple, because the 
eternal son of the Father.” 

“ And now, may I not ask, are you able to accept the 
miracles, things in themselves so improbable ?” 

“ If we suppose the question settled as to whether the 
man was what he said, then all that remains is to ask 
whether the works reported of him are consistent with 
what you can see of the character of the man.” 

“And to you they seem — ?” 

“ Some consistent, others not. Concerning the latter 
I look for more light.” 

“ Meantime let me ask you a question about them : 
What was the main object of the miracles ?” 

“ One thing at least I have learned, Mr. Polwarth, and 
that is not to answer any question of yours in a hurry,” 
said Wingfold. “ I will, if you please, take this one 
home with me, and hold the light to it. 

“ Do,” said Polwarth, “ and you will find it return you 


490 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


the light threefold. One word more ere Mr. Drew 
comes ; do you still think of giving up your curacy ?” 

“ I have almost forgotten I ever thought of such a 
thing. Whatever energies I may or may not have, 1 
know one thing for certain : that I could not devote 
them to any thing else I should think entirely worth do- 
ing. Indeed, nothing else seems interesting enough, 
nothing to repay the labor, but the telling of my fel- 
low-men about the one man who is the truth, and to 
know whom is the life. Even if there be no hereafter, 
I would live my time believing in a grand thing that 
ought to be true if it is not. No facts can take the place 
of truths ; and if these be not truths, then is the loftiest 
part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better 
than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same 
precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand 
more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death 
make even the nothingness into which they have passed 
like the garden of the Lord. I will go farther, Polwarth' 
and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus 
believed, than live forevermore believing as those that 
deny him. If there be no God, I feel assured that this 
existence is and could be but a chaos of contradictions 
whence can emerge nothing worthy to be called a truth, 
nothing worth living for. — No, I will not give up my 
curacy. I will teach that which zs good, even if there 
should be no God to make a fact of it, and I will spend 
tny life on it in the growing hope, which may become 
assurance, that there is indeed a perfect God, worthy of 
being the Father of Jesus Christ, and that it was because 


AN EXAMINATION. 


491 


they are true that these things were lovely to me and to 
so many men and women, of whom some have died for 
them and some would be yet ready to die.” 

“ I thank my God to hear you say so. Nor will you 
stand still there,” said Polwarth. “ But here comes Mr, 
Drew.” 


CHAPTER LXXVL 


IMMORTALITY. 

goes business ?" said Polwarth, when the . 
5w-comer had seated himself. 

“ That is hardly a question I look for from 
)u, sir/’ returned the draper, smiling all 
over his round face, which looked more than ever like a 
moon of superior intelligence. “ For me, I am glad to 
leave it behind me in the shop.” 

“ True business can never be left in any shop. It is a 
care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman.” 

“ That is fact ; and with me it has just taken a new 
shape,” said Drew, “ for I have come with quite a fresh 
diffi.culty. Since I saw you last, Mr. Polwarth, a strange 
and very uncomfortable doubt has rushed in upon me, 
and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it. I have no 
weapons — not a single argument of the least weight. I 
wonder if it be a law of nature that no sooner shall a 
man get into a muddle with one thing, than a thousand 
other muddles shall come pouring in upon him, as if 
Muddle itself were going to swallow him up ! Here am I 



IMMORTALITY. 


493 


just beginning to get a little start in honester ways, when 
up comes the ugly head ot the said doubt, swelling itself 
more and more to look like a fact — namely, that after 
this world there is nothing for us ; nothing at all to be 
had anyhow ; that as we came, so we go : into life, out 
of life ; that, having been nothing before, we shall be 
nothing after ! The flowers come back in the spring 
and the corn in the autumn, but they ain't the same 
flowers or the same corn. They’re just as different as 
the new generations of men.” 

“ There’s no pretence that we come back either. We 
only think we don’t go into the ground, but away some- 
where else,” 

“ You can’t prove that.” 

- No.” 

“ And you don’t know any thing about it !” 

“ Not much — but enough, I think.” 

“ Why, even those that profess to believe it, scoff at 
the idea of an apparition — a ghost !” 

“That’s the fault of the ghosts, I suspect— or their 
reporters. I don’t care about them myself. I prefer 
the tale of one who, they say, rose again and brought 
his body with him.” 

“ Yes ; but he was only one !” 

“ Except two or three whom, they say, he brought to 
life.” 

“ Still there are but three or four.” 

“ To tell you the truth, f do not care much to argue 
the point with you. It is by no means a matter of the 
first importance whether we live forever or not.” 


494 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Mr.'Polwarth !” exclaimed the draper, in such aston- 
ishment mingled with horror as proved he was not in 
immediate danger of becoming an advocate of the doc- 
trine of extinction. 

» 

The gate-keeper smiled what, but for a peculiar ex- 
pression of iindefinable good in it, might have been 
called a knowing smile. 

“ Suppose a thing were in itself not worth having,” 
he said, “ would it be any great enhancement of it as a 
gift to add the assurance that the possession of it was 
eternal ? Most people think it a fine thing to have a 
bit of land to call their own and leave to their children ; 
but suppose a stinking and undrainable swamp, full of 
foul springs ; what consolation would it be to the pro- 
prietor of that to know, while the world lasted, not a hu- 
man being would once dispute its possession with any 
fortunate descendant holding it 

The draper only stared, but his stare was a thorough 
one. The curate sat waiting, with both amusement and 
interest, for what would follow ; he saw the direction in 
which the little man was driving. 

“ You astonish me !” said Mr. Drew, recovering his 
mental breath. “ How can you compare God’s gift to 
such a horrible thing ! Where should we be without 
life ?” 

Rachel burst out laughing, and the curate could not 
help joining her. “ Mr. Drew,” said Polwarth half 
merrily, “are you going to help me drag my chain out to 
its weary length, or are you too much shocked at the 


IMMORTALITY. 


495 


doubtful condition of its first links to touch them ? I 
promise you the last shall be of bright gold.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” said the draper ; “ I might have 
known you didn’t mean it.” 

“ On the contrary, I mean every thing I say, and that 
literally. Perhaps I don’t mean every thing you fancy I 
mean. Tell me, then, would life be worth having on any 
and every possible condition ?” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ You know some, I dare say, who would be glad to 
be rid of life such as it is, and such as they suppose it 
must continue }” 

“ I don’t.” 

“ I do.” 

“ I have always understood that every body clung to 
life.” 

Most people do ; every body certainly does not ; Job, 
for instance.” 

“ They say that is but a poem.” 

“ But a poem ! Even a poem — a representation true 
not of this or that individual, but of the race ! There 
are such persons as would gladly be rid of life, and in 
their condition all would feel the same. Somewhat sim- 
ilar is the state of those who profess unbelief in the ex- 
istence of God : none of them expect, and few of them 
seem to wish, to live forever ! At least so I am told.” 

“ That is no wonder,” said the draper ; “ if they don’t 
believe in God, I mean.” 

“Then there I have you ! There you allow life to be 
not worth having, if on certain evil conditions.” 


496 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ I admit it, then.” 

“And I repeat that to prove life endless is not a mat- 
ter of the first importance. And now I will go a little 
farther. Does it follow that life is worth having be- 
cause a man would like to have it forever?” 

“ I should say so : who should be a better judge than 
the man himself?” 

“ Let us look at it a moment. Suppose — we will take 
a strong case — suppose a man whose whole delight is in 
cruelty, and who has such plentiful opportunity of in- 
dulging the passion that he finds it well with him ; such 
a man, of course, would desire such a life to endure for- 
ever : is such a life worth having ? were it well that man 
should be immortal ?” 

“ Not for others.” 

“ Still less, I say, for himself.” 

“ In the judgment of others, doubtless ; but to him- 
self he would be happy.” 

“ Call his horrible satisfaction happiness, then, and 
leave aside the fact that in his own nature it is a horror 
and not a bliss : a time must come when, in the exercise 
of his delight, he shall have destroyed all life beside, 
and made himself alone with himself in an empty world : 
will he then find life worth having ?” 

‘Then he ought to live for punishment.” 

“ With that we have nothing to do now, but there you 
have given me an answer to my question, whether a 
man’s judgment that his life is worth having proves 
immortality a thing to be desired.” 

“ I have. I understand now.” 


IMMORTALITY. 


497 


“ It follows that there is something of prior impor- 
tance to the possession of immortality : what is that 
something }” 

“ I suppose that the immortality itself should be 
worth possessing.” 

“ Yes ; that the life should be such that it were well 
it should be endless. And what then if it be not such }" 

“ The question then would be whether it could not 
be made such.” 

“ You are right. And wherein consists the essential 
inherent worthiness of a life as life ? The only perfect 
idea of life is — a unit, self-existent and creative. That 
is God, the only one. But to this idea, in its kind, must 
every life, to be complete as life, correspond ; and the 
human correspondence to self-existence is that the man 
should round and complete himself by taking into him- 
self his origin ; by going back and in his own will adopt- 
ing that origin, rooting therein afresh in the exercise of 
his own freedom and in all the energy of his own self- 
roused will ; in other words, that the man say, ‘ I will 
be after the will of the creating I ; ’ that he see and say 
with his whole being that to will the will of God in him- 
self and for himself and concerning himself is the 
highest possible condition of a man. Then has he com- 
pleted his cycle by turning back upon his history, laying 
hold of his cause, and willing his own being in the will 
of the only I AM. This is the rounding, re-creating, 
unifying of the man. This is religion ; and all that 
gathers not with this, scatters abroad.” 

“And then,” said Drew, with some eagerness, “law- 


498 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


fully comes the question, ‘ Shall I or shall I not live fof 
ever ? ’ ” 

“ Pardon me ; I think not,” returned the little pro- 
phet. “ I think rather we have done with it forever. 
The man with life so in himself will not dream of asking 
whether he shall live. It is only in the twilight of a 
half-life, holding in it at once much wherefore it should 
desire its own continuance and much that renders it 
unworthy of continuance, that the doubtful desire of 
immortality can arise. Do you remember” — here Pol- 
warth turned to Wingfold — “ my mentioning to you 
once a certain manuscript of strange interest — to me, at 
least, and Rachel — which a brother of mine left behind 
him r 

“ I remember it perfectly,” answered the curate. 

“ It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this 
question that I should much like, if you gentlemen 
would allow me, to read some extracts from it.” 

Nothing could have been heartier than the assurance 
of both the men that they could but be delighted to 
listen to any thing he chose to give them. 

“■ I must first tell you, however,” said Polwarth, 
“ merely to protect you from certain disturbing specu- 
lations otherwise sure to present themselves, that my 
poor brother was mad, and that what I now read portions 
of seemed to him no play of the imagination, but a rec- 
ord of absolute fact. Some parts are stranger and less 
intelligible than others, but through it all there is abun- 
dance of intellectual movement and what seems to me 
a wonderful keenness to perceive the movements and 


IMMORTALITY. 


499 


arrest the indications of an imagined consciousness.” 

As he spoke, the little man was opening a cabinet in 
which he kept his precious things. He brought from it 
a good-sized quarto volume, neatly bound in morocco, 
with gilt edges, which he seemed to handle not merely 
with respect but with tenderness. 

The heading of the next chapter is rny own, and does 
not belong to the manuscript. 


CnAf>TER LXXVII. 


PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE 
WANDERING JEW. 

HAVE at length been ill, very ill, once more, 
and for many reasons foreign to the weighti- 
est, which I had forgotten, I had hoped that 
I was going to die. But therein I am as 
usual deceived and disappointed. That I have been out 
of my mind I know by having returned to the real 
knowledge of what I am. The conscious present has 
again fallen together and made a whole with the past, 
and that whole is my personal identity. 

“ ‘ How I broke loose from the bonds of a madness 
which, after so many and heavy years of uninterrupted 
sanity, had at length laid hold upon me, I will now 
relate. 

“ ‘ I had, as I have said, been very ill — with some sort 
of fever that had found fit rooting in a brain overwea- 
ried from not having been originally constructed to last 
so long. Whether it came not of an indwelling demon, 
or a legion of demons, I can not tell — God knows. 
Surely I was as one possessed. I was mad, whether for 
years or but for moments— who can tell? I can not. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WANDERING JEW. 50I 


Verily it seems for many years ; but, knowing well the 
truth concerning the relations of time in him that dream- 
eth and waketh from his dream, I place no confidence 
in the testimony of the impressions left upon my seeming 
memory. I can, however, trust it sufficiently as to the 
character of the illusions that then possessed me. I im- 
agined myself an Englishman called Polwarth, of an 
ancient Cornish family. Indeed, I had in my imagination 
as Polwarth gone through the history, every day of it, 
with its sunrise and sunset, of more than half a lifetime. 
I had a brother who was deformed and a dwarf, and a 
daughter who was like him ; and the only thing through- 
out the madness that approached a consciousness of my 
real being and history was the impression that these 
things had come upon me because of a certain grievous 
wrong I had at one time committed, which wrong, how- 
ever, I had quite forgotten — and could ill have imagined 
in its native hideousness. 

“ ‘ But one morning, just as I woke, after a restless 
night filled with dreams, I was aware of a half- 
embodied shadow in my mind — whether thought or 
memory or imagination I could not tell, and the 
strange thing was that it darkly radiated from it the 
conviction that I must hold and identify it, or be for- 
ever lost to myself. Therefore, with all the might of 
my will to retain the shadow, and all the energy of my 
recollection to recall that of which it was the vague 
shadow, I concentrated the w^hole powers of my spirit- 
ual man upon the phantom thought, to fix and retain it. 

“ ‘ Every one knows what it is to hunt such a form- 


502 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


less fact. Evanescent as a rainbow, its whole appear- 
ance, from the first is that of a thing in the act of van- 
ishing. It is a thing that was known, but, from the mo- 
ment consciousness turned its lantern upon it, began to 
become invisible. For a time during the close pursuit 
that follows, it seems only to be turning corner after 
corner to evade the mind’s eye, but behind every corner 
it leaves a portion of itself ; until at length, although 
when finally can not be told, it is gone so utterly that 
the mind remains aghast in the perplexity of the doubt 
whether ever there was a thought there at all. 

“ ‘ Throughout my delusion of an English existence, I 
had been tormented in my wakings with such thought- 
phantoms, and ever had I followed them as an idle man 
may follow a flitting marsh-fire. Indeed, I had grown 
so much interested in the phenomenon and its possible 
indications that I had invented various theories to aCr 
count for them, some of which seemed to myself origi- 
nal and ingenious, while the common idea that they are 
vague reminiscences of a former state of being I had 
again and again examined, and as often entirely rejected 
as in no way tenable or verisimilar. 

“ ‘ But upon the morning to which I have referred, I 
succeeded, for the first time, in fixing, capturing, identi- 
fying the haunting, fluttering thing. That moment the 
bonds of my madness were broken. My past returned 
upon me. I had but to think in any direction, and 
every occurrence, with time and place and all its circum- 
stance, rose again before me. The awful fact of my own 
being once more stood bare — awful always, tenfold 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WANDERING JEW. 503 


more awful after such a period of blissful oblivion there- 
of : I was, I had been, I am now, as I write, the man so 
mysterious in crime, so unlike all other men in his pun- 
ishment, known by various names in various lands — 
here in England as the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus 
was himself again, alas ! — himself and no other. Wife, 
daughter, brother vanished, and returned only in 
dreams. I was and remain the wanderer, the undying, 
the repentant, the unforgiven. O heart ! O weary 
feet ! O eyes that have seen and nevermore shall see, 
until they see once and are blinded forever ! Back upon 
my soul rushes the memory of my deed like a storm of 
hail mingled with fire, flashing through every old dry 
channel, that it throbs and writhes anew, scorched at 
once and torn with the poisonous burning. 


CHAPTER LXXVIII. 


THE WANDERING JEW. 

was a fair summer morning in holy Jerusa 
lem, and I sat and wrought at my trade — foi 
I sewed a pair of sandals for the feet of the 
high-priest Caiaphas. And I wrought dili- 
gently, for it behooved me to cease an hour ere set of 
sun ; for it was the day of preparation for the eating of 
the Passover. 

“ ‘ Now all that night there had been a going to and 
fro in the city, for the chief priests and their followers 
had at length laid hands upon him that was called Jesus, 
whom some believed to be the Messiah, and others, with 
my fool-self amongst them, an arch impostor and blas- 
phemer. For 1 was of the house of Caiaphas, and 
heartily did he desire that the man my lord declared a 
deceiver of the people should meet with the just re- 
ward of his doings. Thus I sat and worked, and 
thought and rejoiced ; and the morning passed, and the 
noon came. 

“ ‘ It was a day of sultry summer, and the street 



THE WANDERING JEW. 


505 


burned beneath the sun, and I sat in the shadow and 
looked out upon the glare, and ever 1 wrought at the 
sandals of my lord with many fine stitches, in cunning 
workmanship. All had been for some time very still, 
when suddenly I thought I heard a far-off tumult. And 
soon came the idle children, who ever run first that 
they be not swallowed up of the crowd ; and they 
ran, and looked behind as they ran. And after 
them came the crowd, crying and shouting, and 
swaying hither and thither ; and in the midst of 
it arose the one arm of a cross, beneath the weight 
of which that same Jesus bent so low that I saw 
him not. Truly, said I, he hath not seldom borne 
heavier burdens in the workshop of his father the Gali- 
lean, but now his sins and his idleness have found him, 
and taken from him his vigor ; for he that despiseth the 
law shall perish, while they that wait upon the Lord 
shall renew their strength. For I was wroth with the 
man who taught the people to despise the great ones 
that administered the law, and give honor to the small 
ones who only kept it. Besides, he had driven my father’s 
brother from the court of the Gentiles with a whip, 
which truly hurt him not outwardly, but stung him to^ 
the soul ; and yet that very temple which he pretended 
thus to honor, he had threatened to destroy and build 
again in three days ! Such were the thoughts of my 
heart ; and when I learned from the boys that it was in 
truth Jesus of Nazareth who passed on his way to Cal- 
vary to be crucified, my heart leaped within me at the 
thought that the law had at length overtaken the male- 


5o6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


factor. I laid down the sandal and my awl, and rose and 
went forth and stood in the front of my shop. And Jesus 
drew nigh, and as he passed, lo ! the end of the cross 
dragged upon the street. And. one in the crowd came 
behind and lifted it up and pushed therewith, so that 
Jesus staggered and had nigh fallen. Then would he 
fain have rested the arm of the cross on the stone by 
which I was wont to go up into my shop from the street. 
But I cried out and drove him thence, saying scornfully, 
Go on, Jesus ; go on. Truly thou restest not 07t stone of 
7nine! Then he turned his eyes upon me, and said, / 
go inde£d, but thou goest 7tot, and therewith he rose again 
under the weight of the cross, and staggered on. 

“ ‘ And I followed in the crowd to Calvary.’ ” 

Here the reader paused, and said, 

“ I can give you but a few passages now. You see it is 
a large manuscript. I will therefore choose some of 
those that bear upon the subject of which we have been 
talking. A detailed account of the crucifixion follows 
here, which I could not bring myself to read aloud. The 
eclipse is in it, and the earthquake, and the white faces 
of the risen dead gleaming through the darkness about 
the cross. It ends thus : 

“ ‘ And all the time, I stood not far from the foot of 
the cross, nor dared go nearer ; for around it were his 
.mother and they that were with her, and my heart was 
sore for her also. And I would have withdrawn my foot 
from the place where I stood, and gone home to weep, 
but something, I know not what, held me there, as it 
were, rooted to the ground. At length the end was 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


507 


drawing near. He opened his mouth and spake to his 
mother and the disciple who stood by her, but truly I 
know not what he said ; for as his eyes turned from them, 
they looked upon me, and my heart died within me. He 
said naught, but his eyes had that in them that would 
have slain me with sorrow had not death, although I 
knew it not, already shrunk from my presence, daring 
no more come nigh such a malefactor, — O Death, how 
gladly would I build thee a temple, set thee in a lofty 
place, and worship thee with the sacrifice of vultures on 
a fire of dead men’s bones, wouldst thou but hear my cry ! 
— But I rave again in my folly. God forgive me. All 
the days of my appointed time will I wait until my 
change come. — With that look — a well of everlast- 
ing tears in my throbbing brain — my feet were unroot- 
ed, and I turned and fled. 

Here the reader paused again, and turned over many 
leaves. 

“ ‘ . . And ever as I passed at night through 

the lands, when I came to a cross by the wayside, 
thereon would I climb, and, winding my arms about 
its arms and my feet about its stem, would there 
hang in the darkness or the moon, in rain or hail, in 
wind or snow or frost, until my sinews gave way and my 
body dropped, and I knew no more until I found myself 
lying at its foot in the morning. For, ever in such case, 
I lay without sense until again the sun shone upon me. 

. . And if ever the memory of that look 

passed from me, then straiglitway I began to long 


So6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


for death, and so longed until the memory and the 
power of the look came again, and with the sorrow 
in my soul came the patience to live. And truly, 
although I speak of forgetting and remembering, such 
motions of my spirit in me were not as those of another 
man ; in me they are not measured by the scale of men’s 
lives : they are not of years, but of centuries ; for the 
seconds of my life are ticked by a clock whose pendulum 
swings through an arc of motionless stars. 

. . Once I had a vision of Death. Methinks it 

must have been a precursive vapor of the madness that 
afterwards enfolded me, for I know well that there is not 
one called Death, that he is but a word needful for 
the weakness of human thought and the poverty of 
human speech ; that he is a no-being, and but a change 
from that which is. I had a vision of Death, I say. 

“ ‘ I was walking over a wide plain of sand, like 
Egypt, so that ever and anon I looked around me to see 
if nowhere, from the base of the horizon, the pyramids 
cut their triangle out of the blue night of heaven ; but I 
saw none. The stars came down and sparkled on the 
dry sands, and all was waste and wide desolation. The 
air also was still as the air of a walled-up tomb, where 
there are but dry bones, and not even the wind of an 
evil vapor that rises from decay. And through the dead 
air came ever the low moaning of a distant sea, towards 
which my feet did bear me. I had been journeying thus 
for years, and in their lapse it had grown but a little 
louder. Suddenly I was aware that I was not alone. A 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


509 


dim figure strode beside me, vague, but certain of pres- 
ence. And I feared him not, seeing that which men 
fear the most was itself that which by me was the most 
desired. So I stood and turned and would have spoken. 
But the shade that seemed not a shadow went on and re- 
garded me not. Then I also turned again towards the 
moaning of the sea and went on. And lo ! the shade 
which had gone before until it seemed but as a vapor 
among the stars, was again by my side walking. And I 
said, and stood not, but walked on : “ Thou shade that art 
not a shadow, seeing there shineth no sun or moon, and 
the stars are many, and the one slayeth the shadow of the 
other, what art thou, and wherefore goest thou by my 
side ? Think not to make me afraid, for I fear nothing 
in the universe but that which I love the best.” (I spake 
of the eyes of the Lord Jesus.) Then the shade that 
seemed no shadow answered me, and spake and said," Lit- 
tle knowest thou what I am, seeing the very thing thou 
sayest I am not, that I am, and naught else, and there 
is no other but me. I am Shadow, the shadow, the 
only shadow — none su'ch as those from which the light 
hideth in terror, yet like them, for life hideth from me 
and turneth away ; yet if life were not, neither were I, for 
I am nothing ; and yet again, so soon as any thing is, 
there am I, and needed no maker, but came of myself, 
for I am Death.” " Ha ! Death!” I cried, and would have 
cast myself before him with outstretched arms of wor- 
shipful entreaty ; but lo ! there was a shadow upon the 
belt of Orion, and no shadow by my side ! and I sighed, 
and walked on towards the ever-moaning sea. Then 


510 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


again the shadow was by my side. And again I spake and 
said, “Thou thing of flitting and return, I despise thee, 
for thou wilt not abide the conflict.” And I would have 
cast myself upon him and wrestled with him there, for de- 
feat and not for victory. But I could not lay hold upon 
him. “Thou art a powerless nothing,” I cried; “ I will 
not even defy thee.” “ Thou wouldst provoke me,” said 
the shadow, “ but it availeth not. I can not be provoked. 
Truly I am but a shadow, yet know I my own worth, for 
I am the Shadow of the Almighty, and where he is, there 
am I.” “ Thou art nothing,” I said. “ Nay, nay, I am not 
Nothing. Thou, nor any man — God only knoweth what 
that word meaneth. l am but the shadow of Nothing, 
and when thou sayest nothing, thou meanest only me ; but 
w'hat God meaneth when he sayeth Nothing — the nothing 
without him, that nothing which is no shadow but the 
very substance of Unbeing — no created soul can know.” 
“Then art thou not Death ?” I asked. “ I am what thou 
thinkest of when thou sayest Death” he answered, “ but I 
am not Death.” “Alas! then, why comest thou to me 
in the desert places, for I did think thou wast Death 
indeed, and couldst take me unto thee so that I should 
be no more.” “That is what death can not do for thee,” 
said the shadow ; “ none but he that created thee can 
cause that thou shouldst be no-more. Thou art until he 
will that thou be not. I have heard it said amongst the 
wise that, hard as it is to create, it is harder still to un- 
create. Truly I can not tell. But wouldst thou be un- 
created by the hand of Death ? Wouldst thou have thy 
no-being the gift of a shadow Then I thought of the 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


51I 


eyes of the Lord Jesus, and the look he cast upon me. 
and I said, “ No : I would not be carried away of Death* 
I would be fulfilled of Life, and stand before God for- 
ever.” Then once again the belt of Orion grew dim, and 
I saw the shadow no more. And yet did I long for 
Death, for I thought he might bring me to those eyes, 
and the pardon that lay in them. 

* * * * * * 

“ ‘ But again, as the years went on and each brought 
less hope than that before it, I forgot the look the Lord 
had cast upon me, and in the weariness of the life that was 
mortal and yet would not cease, in the longing after the 
natural end of that which against nature endured, I be- 
gan to long even for the end of being itself. And in a 
city of the Germans I found certain men of my own na- 
tion who said unto me, “ Fear not, Ahasuerus ; there is 
no life beyond the- grave. Live on until thy end come, 
and cease thy complaints. Who is there among us who 
would not gladly take upon him thy judgment, and live 
until he was weary of living ?” “ Yea, but to live after 

thou art weary I said. But they heeded me not, an- 
swering me and saying, “Search thou the Scriptures, 
even the Book of the Law, and see if thou find there 
one leaf of this gourd of a faith that hath sprung up in 
a night. Verily, this immortality is but a flash in the 
brain of ‘men that would rise above their fate. Sayeth 
Moses, or sayeth Job, or sayeth David or Daniel a word 
of the matter ?” And I listened unto them, and became 
of their mind. But therewithal the longing after death 
returned with tenfold force, and I rose up and girt my 


512 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


garment about me, and went forth once more to search 
for him whom I now took for the porter of the gate of 
eternal silence and unfelt repose. And I said unto my- 
self as I walked. What in the old days was sweeter, 
when I was weary with my labor of making of shoes, than 
to find myself dropping into the death of sleep ! how 
much sweeter then must it not be to sink into the sleep- 
iest of sleeps, the father-sleep, the mother-bosomed 
death of nothingness and unawaking rest ! Then shall 
all this endless whir of the wheels of thought a^'id desire 
be over ; then welcome the night whose da'Kness does 
not seethe, and which no morning shall ever stir ! 

****** 

“ ‘ And wherever armies were drawing nigh, each to 
the other, and the day of battle was near, thither I flew 
in hot haste, that I might be first upon the field, and 
ready to welcome hottest peril. I fought not, for I 
would not slay those that counted it not the good 
thing to be slain, as I counted it. But had the armies 
been of men that loved death like me, how had I raged 
among them then, even as the angel Azrael, to give 
them their sore-desired rest ! for I loved and hated not 
my kind, and would diligently have mown them down 
out of the stinging air of life into the soft balm of the 
sepulchre. But what they sought not, and I therefore 
would not give, that searched I after the more eagerly for 
myself. And my sight grew so keen that, when yet no 
bigger than a mote in the sunbeam, I could always de- 
scry ',he vulture-scout hanging aloft over the field of 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


513 


destiny. Then would I hasten on and on, until a swoop 
would have brought him straight on my head. 

* * * * * * 

And with that a troop of horsemen, horses and men 
mad with living fear, came with a level rush towards 
the spot where I sat, faint with woe. And I sprang up 
and bounded to meet them, throwing my arms aloft 
and shouting as one who would turn a herd. And like 
a wave of the rising tide before a swift wind, a wave that 
sweeps on and breaks not, they came hard-buffeting over 
my head. Ah ! that was a torrent indeed !— a thunder- 
ous succession of solid billows, alive, hurled along by the 
hurricane-fear in the heart of them ! For one moment 
only I felt and knew what I lay beneath, and then for a 
lime there was nothing. I woke in silence, and 
thought I was dying ; that I had all but passed across the 
invisible line between, and in a moment there would be 
forevermore nothing and nothing. Then followed 
again an empty space, as it seemed. “And now I am 
dead and gone,” I said, “ and shall wander no more.” And 
with that came the agony of hell, for, lo ! still I thought ! 
And I said lo myself, “Alas ! O God ! for notwithstand- 
ing I no more see or hear or taste or smell or touch, 
and my body hath dropped from me, still am I Ahasu- 
erus, the Wanderer, and must go on and on and on, blind 
and deaf, through the unutterable wastes that know not 
the senses of man — nevermore to find rest ! Alas ! 
Death is not death, seeing he slayeth but the leathern 
bottle, and spilleth not the wine of life upon the earth, 
Alas ! alas ! for I can not die !” And with that a finger 


V 


514 THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


twitched, and I shouted aloud for joy : I was yet in the 
body ! And I sprang to my feet jubilant, and, lame and 
bruised and broken-armed, tottered away after Death, 
who yet might hold the secret of eternal repose. I was 
alive, but yet there was hope, for Death was yet before 
me ! I was alive, but I had not died, and who could tell 
but I might yet find the lovely night that hath neither 
clouds nor stars ! I had not passed into the land of the 
dead and found myself yet living ! The wise men of my 
nation in the city of the Almains might yet be wise ! 
And for an hour I rejoiced, and was glad greatly. 

♦ 


i 


CHAPTER LXXIX. 


THE WANDERING JEW. 

T was midnight, and sultry as hell. All day 
not a breath had stirred. The country 
through which I passed was level as the 
sea that had once flowed above it. My heart 
had almost ceased to beat, and I was weary as the 
man who is too weary to sleep outright, and labors in 
his dreams. I slumbered and yet walked on. My blood 
flowed scarce faster than the sluggish water in the many 
canals I crossed on my weary way. And ever I thought 
to meet the shadow that was and was not death. But 
this was no dream. Just on the stroke of midnight, 
I came to the gate of a large city, and the watchers let 
me pass. Through many an ancient and lofty street I 
wandered like a ghost in a dream, knowing no one, and 
caring not for myself, and at length reached an open 
space where stood a great church, the cross upon whose 
spire seemed bejewelled with the stars among which it 
dvvelt. And in my soul I said, O Lord Jesus ! and went 
up to the base of the tower, and found the door thereof 
open to my hand. Then with my staff I ascended the 



5i6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


winding stairs, until I reached the open sky. And the 
stairs went still winding, on and on, up towards the 
stars. And with my staff I ascended, and arose into the 
sky, until I stood at the foot of the cross of stone. 

“ ‘ Ay me ! how the centuries without haste, without 
rest, had glided along since I stood by the cross of dis- 
honor and pain ! And God had not grown weary of his 
life yet, but I had grown so weary in my very bones 
that weariness was my element, and I had ceased almost 
to note it. And now, high uplifted in honor and wor- 
ship over every populous city, stood the cross among the 
stars ! I scrambled up the pinnacles, and up on the 
carven stem of the cross, for my sinews were as steel, 
and my muscles had dried and hardened until they were 
as those of the tiger or the great serpent. So 1 climbed and 
lifted up myself until I reached the great arms of the cross 
and over them flung my arms, as was my wont, and en- 
twined the stem with my legs, and there hung three 
hundred feet above the roofs of the houses. And as 1 
hung the moon rose and cast the shadow of me Ahasue- 
rus upon the cross, up against the Pleiades. And as if 
dull Nature were offended thereat, nor understood the 
offering of my poor sacrifice, the clouds began to gath- 
er, like the vultures — no one could have told whence. 
From all sides around they rose, and the moon was 
blotted out, and they gathered and rose until they met 
right over the cross. And when they closed, then the 
lightning brake forth, and the thunder with it, and it 
flashed and thundered above and around and beneath me, 
so that I could not tell which voice belonged to which 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


517 


arrow, for all were mingled in one great confusion and 
uproar. And the people in the houses below heard the 
sound of the thunder, and they looked from their win- 
dows and they saw the storm raving and flashing about 
the spire, which stood the heart of the agony, and they 
saw something hang there, even upon its cross, in the 
form of a man, and they came from their houses, and the 
whole space. beneath was filled with people, who stood 
gazing up at the marvel. A miracle! A miracle ! ih^y 
cried ; and truly it was no miracle — it was only me Ahas- 
uerus, the wanderer, taking thought concerning his crime 
against the crucified. Then came a great light all about * 
me, such light for shining as I had never before beheld, 
and indeed I saw it not all with my eyes, but the greater 
part with my soul, which surely is the light of the eyes 
themselves. And I said to myselt. Doubtless the Lord 
is at hand, and he cometh to me as late to the blessed 
Saul of Tarsus, who was 7iut the chief of sinners, but I — 
Ahasuerus, the accursed. And the thunder burst like 
the bursting of a world in the furnace of the sun ; and 
whether it was that the lightning struck me, or that I 
dropped, as was my custom, outwearied from the cross, 

I know not, but thereafter I lay at its foot among the 
pinnacles, and when the people looked again the mira- 
cle was over, and they returned to their houses and 
slept. And the next day, when I sought the comfort of 
the bath, I found upon my side the figure of a cross, and 
the form of a man hanging thereupon as I had hung, de- 
painted in a dark color as of lead, plain upon the flesh 
of my side over my heart. Here was a miracle indeed ! 


5i8 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


but verily I knew not whether therefrom to gather com- 
fort or despair. 

“ ‘ And it was night as I went into a village among 
the mountains, through the desert places of which I had 
all that day been wandering. And never before had my 
condition seemed to me so hopeless. There was not 
one left upon the earth who had ever seen me knowing 
me, and although there went a tale of such a man as I, 
yet faith had so far vanished from the earth, that for a 
thing to be marvellous, however just, was sufficient rea- 
‘ son wherefor no man, to be counted wise, should be- 
lieve the same. For the last fifty years I had found not 
one that would receive my testimony. For when I told 
them the truth concerning myself, saying as I now say, 
and knowing the thing for true — that I was Ahasuerus, 
whom the Word had banished from his home in the re- 
gions governed of Death, shutting against him the door 
of the tomb that he should not go in — every man said I 
was mad, and would hold with me no manner of com- 
munication, more than if I had been possessed with a 
legion of swine-loving demons. Therefore was I cold 
at heart, and lonel)?- to the very root of my being. And 
thus it was with me that midnight as I entered the vil- 
lage among the mountains.— Now all therein slept, so 
even that not a dog barked at sound of my footsteps. 
But suddenly, and my soul yet quivers with dismay at 
the remembrance, a yell of horror tore its way from the 
throat of every sleeper at once, and shot into every 
cranny of the many-folded mountains, that my soul 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


519 


knocked shaking agaijist the sides of my body, 
and I also shrieked aloud with the keen terror of the 
cry. For surely there was no sleeper there, man, wo- 
man, or child, who yelled not aloud in an agony of fear. 
And I knew that it could only be because of the unseen 
presence in their street of the outcast, the homeless, 
the loveless, the wanderer forever, who had refused a 
stone to his maker whereon to rest his cross. Truly I 
know not whence else could have come that cry. And 
I looked to see that all the inhabitants of the village 
should rush out upon me, and go forth to slay the unslay- 
able in their agony. But the cry passed, and after the 
cry came again the stillness. And for very dread 
lest yet another such cry should enter my ears, and 
turn my heart to a jelly, I did hasten my steps to leave 
the dwellings of the children of the world, and pass out 
upon the pathless hills again. But as I turned and 
would have departed, the door of a house opened over 
against where I stood ; and as it opened, lo 1 a sharp gust 
of wind from the mountains swept along the street, and 
out into the wind came running a girl, clothed only in 
the garment of the night. And the wind blew upon her, 
and by the light of the moon I saw that her hands and 
her feet were rough and brown, as of one that knew 
labor and hardship, but her body was dainty and fair, 
and moulded in loveliness. Her hair blew around her 
like a rain cloud, so that it almost blinded her, and truly 
she had much ado to clear it from her face, as a half 
drowned man would clear from his face the waters 
whence he hath been lifted ; and like two stars of light 


520 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


from amidst the cloud gazed forth the eyes of the girl. 
And she looked upon me with the courage of a child, and 
she said unto me. Stranger, knowest thou wherefore 
was that cry ? Was it thou who did so cry in our street in 
the night? And i answered her and said. Verily not 1. 
maiden, but I too heard the cry, and it shook my soul 
within me. — What seemed it unto thee like, she asked, for 
truly I slept, and know only the terror thereof and not 
the sound ? And I said. It seemed unto me that every 
soul in the village cried out at once in some dream of 
horror — I cried not out, she said ; fori slept and dream- 
ed, and the dream was such that I know verily I cried 
not out. And the maiden was lovely in her innocence. 
And I said : And was thy dream such, maiden, that thou 
wouldst not refuse but wouldst tell it to an old man like 
me ? And with that the wind ca me down from the moun- 
tain like a torrent of wolves, and it laid hold upon me and 
swept me from the village, and I fled before it, and 
could not stay my steps until I got me into the covert 
of a hollow rock. And scarce had I turned in thither 
when, lo ! thither came the maiden also, flying in my 
footsteps, and driven of the self-same mighty wind. 
And I turned in pity and said. Fear not, my child. Here 
is but an old man with a sore and withered heart, and he 
will not harm thee. — I fear thee not, she answered, else 
would I not have followed thee. — Thou didst not follow 
me of thine own inclining, I said, but the wind that 
came from the mountains and swept me before it. did 
bear thee after me. — Truly I know of no wind, she said, 
but the wind of my own following of thee. Wherefore 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


521 


didst thou flee from me? — Nay! but wherefore didst 
thou follow me, maiden ? — That I might tell thee my 
dream, to the which thou didst desire to hearken. For 
lo ! as I slept I dreamed that a man came unto me and 
said. Behold ! I am the unresting and undying one, and 
my burden is greater than I can bear, for Death who be- 
friendeth all is my enemy, and will not look upon me in 
peace. And with that came the cry, and I awoke and ran 
out to see whence came the cry, and found thee alone 
in the street. And as God liveth, such as was the man 
in my dream, such art thou in my waking sight. — Not the 
less must I ask thee again, I said, wherefore didst thou 
follow me ? — That I niay comfort thee, she answered. 
And how thinkest thou to comfort one whom God 
hath forsaken ?— That cannot be, she said, seeing that 
in a vision of the night he sent thee unto me, and so 
now hath sent me unto thee. Therefore will I go 
with thee, and minister unto thee. — Bethink thee well 
what thou doest, I said ; and before thou art fully re- 
solved, sit thee down by me in this cave, that I may tell 
thee my tale. And straightway she sat down, and I. 
told her all. And ere I had finished the sun had risen. 
— Then art thou now alone, said the maiden, and hast 
no one to love thee ? — No one, I answered, man, wo- 
man, or child. — Then will I go with thee, for I know 
neither father nor mother, and no one hath power over 
me, for I keep goats on the mountains for wages, and if 
thou wilt but give me bread to eat I will serve thee. 
And a great love arose in my heart to the maiden. And 
I left her in the cave, and went to the nearest city, and 


522 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


returned thence with garments and. victuals. And I 
loved the maiden greatly. And although my age was 
then marvellous, being over and above a thousand 
and seven hundred years, yet found she my person 
neither pitiful nor uncomely, for I was still in body 
even such as when the Lord Jesus spake the word of my 
doom. And the damsel loved me, and was mine. And 
she was as the apple of mine eye. And the world was 
no more unto me as a desert, but it blossomed as the 
rose of Sharon. And although I knew every city upon 
it, and every highway and navigable sea, yet did all be- 
come to me fresh and new because of the joy which the 
damsel had in beholding its kingdoms and the glories 
thereof. * * * 

“ ‘ And it came to pass that my heart grew proud 
within me, and I said to myself that I was all-superior 
to other men, for Death could not touch me ; that I was 
a marvel upon the face of the world ; and in this yet 
more above all men that had ever lived, that at such an 
age as mine I could yet gain the love, yea, the absolute 
devotion, of such an one as my wife, who never wearied 
of my company and conversation. So I took to me 
even the free grace of love as my merit unto pride, and 
laid it not to the great gift of God and the tenderness of 
the heart of my beloved. Like Satan in heaven, I was 
uplifted in the strength and worthiness and honor 
of my demon-self, and my pride went not forth in 
thanks, for I gloried not in my God, but in Ahasuerus. 
Then the thought smote me like an arrow of lightning; 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


523 


She will die, and thou shall live — live — live — and as he hath 
delayed, so will he yet delay his coming. And as Satan 
from the seventh heaven, I fell prone. * * * 
Then my spirit began again to revive within me, and I 
said, Lo ! I have yet many years of her love ere she 
dieth, and when she is gone, I shall yet have the mem- 
ory of my beloved to be with me and cheer me and bear 
me up, for I may never again despise that which she 
hath loved as she hath loved me. And yet again a 
thought smote me, and it was as an arrow of the light- 
ning, and its barb was the truth : But she will grow old, it 
said, and will wither before thy face, and be as the waning 
moon in the heavens. And my heart cried out in an 
agony. But my will sought to comfort my heart, and said. 
Cry not out, for in spite of old age as in spite of death, 
I will love her still. Then something began to writhe 
within me, and to hiss out words that gathered them- 
selves unto this purpose : But she will grow unlovely, 
and wrinkled, and dark of hue, and the shape of her 
body will vanish, and her form be unformed, and her 
eyes will grow small and dim, and creep back into her 
head, and her hair will fall from her, and she shall be as 
the unsightly figure of Death with a skin drawn over 
his unseemly bones ; and the damsel of thy love, with 
the round limbs and the flying hair, and the clear eyes 
out of which looketh a soul clear as they, will be no- 
where — nowhere, for evermore, for thou wilt not be 
able to believe that she it is who standeth before thee : 
how will it be with thee then ? And what mercy is his 
who hath sent thee a growing loss in the company of 


524 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


this woman ? Thereupon I arose in the strength of my 
agony and went forth. And I said nothing unto my 
wife, but strode to the foot of the great mountain, 
whose entrails were all aglow, and on whose sides grew 
the palm and the tree-bread and the nut of milk. And 
I climbed the mountain, nor once looked behind me, but 
climbed to the top. And there for one moment I stood 
in the stock-dullness of despair. And beneath me was 
the great fiery gulf, outstretched like a red lake 
skimmed over with black ice, through the cracks where- 
in shone the blinding fire. Every moment here and 
there a great liquid bubbling would break through the 
crust, and made a wallowing heap upon the flat, then 
sink again leaving an open red well-pool of fire whence 
the rays shot up like flame, although flame there was 
none. It lay like the back of some huge animal upheaved 
out of hell, which was wounded and bled fire. — Now, in 
the last year of my long sojourn, life had again, because 
of the woman that loved me, become precious unto me, 
and more than once had I laughed as I caught myself 
starting back from some danger in a crowded street, for 
the thing was new to me, so utterly had the care of my life 
fallen into disuse with me. But now again in my misery 
I thought no more of danger, but went stalking and 
sliding down the bindery slope of the huge fire cup, and 
out upon the lake of molten earth — molten as when 
first it shot from the womb of the sun, of whose ardour, 
through all the millions of years, it had not yet cooled. 
And as once St. Peter on the stormy water to find the 
Lord of Life, so walked I on the still lake of fire, car- 


THE WANDERING JEW. 


525 


ing neither for life nor death. For my heart was with- 
ered to the roots by the thought of the decay of her 
whom I had loved ; for would not then her very pre- 
sence every hour be causing me to forget the beauty 
that had once made me glad ? — I had walked some ten 
furlongs, and passed the middle of the lake, when sud- 
denly I bethought me that she would marvel whither I 
had gone, and set out to seek me, and something might 
befall her, and I should lose my rose ere its leaves had 
begun to drop. And I turned and trode again in haste 
across the floor of black heat, broken and seamed with red 
light. And lo ! as I neared the midst of the lake, a form 
came towards me, walking in ’the very footsteps I had 
left behind me, nor had I to look again to know the 
gracious motion of my beloved. And the black ice 
broke at her foot, and the fire shone up on her face, and 
it was lovely as an angel of God, and the glow of her 
love outshone the glow of the nether fire. And I called 
not to stay her foot, for I judged that the sooner she 
was with me, the sooner would she be in safety, for I 
knew how to walk thereon better than she. And my 
heart sang a song within me in praise of the love of wo- 
man, but I thought only of the love of my woman to me, 
whom the fires of hell could no£ hold back from 
him w'ho was worthy of her love ; and my heart 
sent the song up to my lips ; but, as the first word 
arose, sure itself a red bubble from the pit of 
glowing hell, the black crust burst up between us, and 
a great hillock of seething, slow-spouting, slow-falling, 
mad red fire arose. For a moment or two the molten 


526 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


mound bubbled and wallowed, then sank — and I saw 
not my wife. Headlong I plunged into the fiery pool at 
my feet, and the clinging torture hurt me not, and I 
caught her in iny arms, and rose to the surface, and 
crept forth, and shook the fire from mine eyes, and lo ! 
1 held to m}'- bosom but as the fragment of a cinder of 
the furnace. And I laughed aloud in my madness, and 
the devils below beard me, and laughed yet again. O 
Age ! O Decay ! I cried, see how I triumph over thee : 
what canst thou do to this } And I flung the cinder from 
me into the pool, and plunged again into the grinning 
fire. But it cast me out seven times, and the seventh 
time I turned from it, and rushed out of the valley of 
burning, and threw myself on the mountain-side in the 
moonlight, and awoke mad. 

“ ‘ And what I had then said in despair, I said yet again 
in thankfulness. O Age ! O Decay ! I cried, what canst 
thou now do to destroy the image of her which I bear 
nested in my heart of hearts } That at least is safe, I 
thank God. And from that hour I nevermore believed 
that I should die when at length my body dropped from 
me. If the thought came, it came as a fear, and not as 
athing concerning 'Vhich a man may say I would ox I 
would not. Fora mighty hope had risen within me, that 
yet I should stand forgiven in the eyes of him that was 
crucified, and that in token of his forgiveness, he would 
grant me to look again, but in peace, upon tbe face of her 
that had loved me. O mighty Love, who can tell to what 
heights of perfection tnou mayest yet rise in the bosom, 
of the meanest who followeth the Crucified.’ ’ * 


CHAPTER LXXX. 


REMARKS. 

HEN Polwarth closed the manuscript, and 
for a time no one spoke. 

“The man who wrote that book,” said 
Wingfold, “could not have been all out of 
his right mind.” 

“I must confess to you,” returned Polwarth, “ that I 
have chosen some of the more striking passages — only 
some of them, however. One thing is pretty clear — 
that, granted the imagined conditions, within that cir- 
cle the writer is sane enough — as sane at least as the 
Wandering Jew himself could well have been.” 

“ Could you trust me with the manuscript, Mr. Poi- 
wartb said the curate. 

“ Willingly.” 

“ And I may carry it home with me ?” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ I shall take right good care of it. Are there any 
further memorials of struggle with unbelief 

“ Yes, there are some ; for mood and not conviction 



528 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


must, in such a mind, often rule the hour. Sometimes 
he can believe ; sometimes he cannot : he is a great 
man indeed who can always rise above his own moods ! 
There is one passage I specially remember in which 
after his own fashion he treats of the existence of a 
God. You will know the one I mean when you come 
to it.” 

“ It is indeed a treasure !” said the curate, taking the 
book and regarding it with prizing eyes. In his heart 
he was thinking of Leopold and Helen. And while he 
thus regarded the book, he was himself regarded of the 
gray luminous eyes of Rachel. What shone from those 
eyes may have been her delight at hearing him so speak 
of the book, for the hand that wrote it was that of her 
father ; but there was a lingering in her gaze, not unmix- 
ed with questioning, and a certain indescribable liquidity 
in its light, reminding one of the stars as seen through a 
clear air from which the dew settles thick, that might 
have made a mother anxious. Alas for many a woman 
whose outward form is ungainly — she has a full round 
heart under the twisted ribs ! 

Why then should I say alas? Were it better that the 
heart were like the shape ? or are such as Rachel forgot- 
ten before the God of the sparrows ? No, surely ; but 
even he who most distinctly believes that from before the 
face of God every sorrow shall vanish, that they that sow 
in tears shall reap in joy, that death is but a mist thal 
for a season swathes the spirit, and that, ever as the self- 
seeking vanishes from love, it groweth more full of de' 
light — even he who wdth all his heart believes this, may 


REMARKS. 


529 


be mournful over the aching of another heart while yet 
it lasts ; and he who looks for his own death as his resur- 
rection, may yet be sorrowful at every pale sunset that 
reminds him of the departure of the beloved before him. 

The curate rose and took his departure, but the light 
of the gaze that had rested upon him lingered yet on 
the countenance of Rachel, and a sad half-smile hung 
over the motions of the baby-like fingers that knitted so 
busily. 

The draper followed the curate, and Polwarth went up 
to his own room : he never could keep off his knees for 
long together. And as soon as she was alone Rachel’s 
hands dropped on her lap, her eyes closed, and her lips 
moved with solemn sweet motions. If there was a 
hearing ear open to that little house, oh surely those 
two were bles*sed ! If not, then kind death was yet fora 
certainty drawing nigh — only what if in deep hell there 
should be yet a deeper hell ? And until slow Death ar- 
rive what loving heart can bear the load that stupid 
Chance or still more stupid Fate has heaped upon it ? 
Yet had I rather be crushed beneath the weight of mine, 
and die with my friends in the moaning of eternal fare- 
wells, than live like George Bascombe to carry lightly 
his little bag of content. A cursed confusion indeed is 
the universe, if it be no creation but the helpless un- 
helpable thing such as men would have us believe it— 
the hotbed mother of the children of an iron Necessity. 
Can any damnation be worse than this damning into an 
existence from which there is no refuge but a doubtful 
death ? 


530 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Drew overtook Wingfold, and they walked together 
into Glaston. 

“ Wasn’t that splendid ?” said the draper. 

“ Hath not God chosen the weak things of the world 
to confound the mighty ?” returned the curate. “ Even 
through the play of a madman’s imagination, the spirit 
of a sound mind may speak. Did you not find in it 
some stuff that would shape into answers to your ques- 
tions }” 

“ I ought to have done so, I dare say,” answered the 
draper, “ but to tell the truth, I was so taken up with 
the wild story, and the style of the thing, and the little 
man’s way of reading it, that I never thought of what I 
was full of when I came.” 

They parted at the shop, and the curate went on. 


CHAPTER LXXXI. 


STRUGGLES. 

E stopped at the Manor House, for it was only 
beginning to be late, to enquire after Leo- 
pold. Helen received him with her usual 
coldness— a manner which was in part as- 
sumed for self-protection, for in his presence she always 
felt rebuked, and which had the effect of a veil between 
them to hide from her much of the curate’s character 
that might otherwise have been intelligible to her. 
Leopold, she said, was a little better, butWingfold walked 
home thinking what a happy thing it would be if God 
were to take him away indeed. 

His interest in Helen deepened and deepened. He 
could not help admiring her strength of character even 
when he saw it spent for worse than nought ; and her 
devotion to her brother was lovely, notwithstanding the 
stains of selfishness that spotted it. Her moral stan- 
dard was far from lofty, and as to her spiritual nature, 
that as yet appeared nowhere. And yet the growth in 
her was marvellous when he thought of what she had 



532 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


seemed before this trouble came. One evening as he 
left Leopold, he heard her singing, and stood on the 
stair to listen. And to listen was to marvel. For her 
voice, instead of being hard and dry, as when he heard it 
before, was, without any loss of elasticity, now liquid 
and mellifluous, and full of feeling. Its tones were 
borne along like the leaves on the wild west wind of 
Shelley’s sonnet. And the longing of the curate to 
help her from that moment took a fresh departure, and 
grew and grew. But as the hours and days and weeks 
passed, and the longing found no outlet, it turned to an 
almost hopeless brooding upon the face and the form, 
yea the heart and soul of the woman he so fain would 
help, until ere long he loved her with the passion of a 
man mingled with the compassion of a prophet. He 
saw that something had to be done in her — perhaps 
that some saving shock in the guise of ruin had to visit 
her ; that some door had to be burst open, some roof 
blown away, some rock blasted, that light and air might 
have free course through her soul’s house, without 
which that soul could never grow stately like the house 
it inhabited. Whatever might be destined to effect this, 
for the chance of rendering poorest and most servile 
aid, he would watch and did watch, in silence and self- 
restraint, lest he should be betrayed into any presump- 
tuous word that might breathe frost instead of balm 
upon the buds of her delaying spring. If he might but 
be allowed to minister when at length the sleeping soul 
should stir ! If its waking glance— ah ! if it might fall 
on him ! As often as the thought intruded, his heart 


STRUGGLES. 


533 


would give one delirious bound, then couch ashamed 
of its presumption. He would not, he dared not look 
in that direction. He accused himself of mingling earth- 
ly motives and feelings with the unselfish and true, and 
scorned himself because of it. And was not Bascombe 
already the favoured friend of her heart Yet how 
could it be of her heart } for what concern had hearts 
in a common unbelief? None; but there were hearts 
— the man and the woman — notwithstanding, who might 
yet well be drawn together by the unknown divine 
which they also shared ; and that Helen, whose foot 
seemed now to approach and now to shun the line be- 
twixt the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of 
heaven, should retire with such a guide into the desert 
of denial and chosen godlessness, was to Wingfold a 
thought of torture almost unendurable. The thought 
of its possibility, nay, probability — for were not such 
unfitnesses continually becoming facts ? — threatened 
sometimes to upset the whole fabric of his faith, al- 
though reared in spite of theology, adverse philosophy, 
and the most honest and bewildering doubt. That such 
a thing should be possible seemed at those times to 
bear more against the existence of a God, than all the 
other grounds of question together. Then a shudder 
would go to the very deeps of his heart, and he would 
lay himself silent before the presence for a time ; or 
make haste into the solitudes — not where the sun shone 
and the water ran, but where the light was dim and the 
wind low in the pine woods. There, where the sombre 
green vaults were upheld by a hundred slender columns. 


534 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


and the far-receding aisles seemed to lead to the ances- 
tral home of shadows, there, his own soul a shadow of 
grief and fear among the shades of the gloomy temple, he 
bowed his heart before the Eternal, gathered together all 
the might of his being, and groaned forth in deepest 
effort of a will that struggled to be : “ Thy will be done, 
and not mine.” Then would his spirit again walk erect, 
and carry its burden as a cross and not as a gravestone. 

Sometimes he was sorely perplexed to think how the 
weakness, as he called it, had begun, and how it had 
grown upon him. He could not say it was his doing, 
and what had he ever been aware of in it against which 
he ought to have striven } Came not the whole thing 
of his nature, a nature that was not of his design, and 
was beyond him and his control — a nature that either 
sprung from a God, or grew out of an unconscious Fate ? 
If from the latter, how was such as he to encounter 
and reduce to a constrained and self-rejecting reason a 
Self unreasonable, being an issue of the Unreasoning, 
which Self was yet greater than he, its vagaries the 
source of his intensest consciousness and brightest 
glimpses of the ideal and all-desirable. If on the other 
hand it was born of a God, then let that God look to it, 
for, sure, that which belonged to his nature could not be 
evil or of small account in the eyes of him who made him 
in his own image. But alas ! that image had, no matter 
how, been so defaced, that the will of the man might 
even now be setting itself up against the will of the God ! 
Did his love then spring from the God-will or the man- 
will ? Must there not be some God-vray of the thing, all 


STRUGGLES. 


535 


right and nothing wrong ? — But he could not compass 
it, and the marvel to himself was that all the time he 
was able to go on preaching, and that with some sense 
of honesty and joy in his work. 

In this trouble more than ever Wingfold felt that if 
there was no God, his soul was but a thing of rags and 
patches out in the masterless pitiless storm and hail of 
a chaotic universe. Often would he rush into the dark, 
as it were, crying for God, and ever he would emerge 
therefrom with some tincture of the light, enough to 
keep him alive ana send him to his work. And there 
in her own seat, Sunday after Sunday, sat the woman 
whom he had seen ten times, and that for no hasty mo- 
ments, during the week, by the bedside of her brother, 
yet to whom only now, in the open secrecy of the pul- 
pit, did he dare utter the words of might he would so 
fain have poured direct into her suffering heart. And 
there, Sunday after Sunday, the face he loved bore wit- 
ness to the trouble of the heart he loved yet more : that 
heart was not yet redeemed ! oh, might it be granted 
him to set some little wind a blowing for its revival and 
hope ! As often as he stood up to preach, his heart 
swelled with the message he bore — a message of no pri- 
vate interpretation, but for the healing of the nations, 
yet a message for her, and for the healing of every indi- 
vidual heart that would hear and take, and he spoke with 
the freedom and dignity of a prophet. But when he 
saw her afterwards he scarcely dared let his eyes rest a 
moment on her face, would only pluck the flower of a 
glance flying, or steal it at such moments when he 


536 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


thought she would not see. She caught his glance 
however far oftener than he knew, and was sometimes 
aware of it without seeing it at all. And there was that 
in the curate’s behaviour, in his absolute avoidance ot 
self-assertion, or the least possible intrusion upon her 
mental privacy — in the wrapping of his garments 
around him, as it were, that his presence might offend as 
little as might be, while at the same time he was full of 
simple direct ministration to her brother, without one 
side-glance that sought approval of her, which the no- 
bility of the woman could not fail to note, and seek to 
understand. 

It was altogether a time of great struggle with Wing- 
fold. He seemed to be assailed in every direction, and 
to feel the strong house of life giving way in every part, 
and yet he held on — lived, which he thought was all, 
and, without knowing it, grew. Perhaps it may be to 
this period that the following verses which I found among 
his papers belong : he could not himself tell me. — 


Out of my door I run to do the thing 
That calls upon me. Straight the wind of words 
Whoops from mine ears the sounds of them that sing 
About their work — My God ! my Father-King. 

I turn in haste to see thy blessed door. 

But lo ! a cloud of flies and bats and birds. 

And stalking vapours, and vague monster herds 
Have risen and lighted, rushed and swollen between. 


STRUGGLES. 


537 


Ah me ! the house of peace is there no more. 
Was it a dream then ? Walls, fireside, and floor. 
And sweet obedience, loving, calm, and free. 
Are vanished — gone as thej'^ had never been. 

I labor groaning. Comes a sudden sheen ! — 
And I am kneeling at my Father’s knee. 
Sighing with joy, and hoping utterly. 


CHAPTER LXXXII. 


THE LAWN. 



EOPOLD had begun to cough, and the fever 
continued. Every afternoon came the red 
flush to his cheek, and the hard glitter into 
his eye. His talk was then excited, and most- 
ly about his coming trial. To Helen it was terribly pain- 
ful and she confessed to herself that but for Wingfold she 
must have given way. Leopold insisted on seeing Mr. 
Hooker every time he called, and every time expressed 
the hope that he would not allow pity for his weak state 
to prevent him from applying the severe remedy of the 
law to his moral condition. But in truth it began to 
look doubtful whether disease would not run a race 
with law for his life, even if the latter should at once pro- 
ceed to justify a claim. From the first Faber doubted 
if he would ever recover from the consequences of that 
exposure in the churchyard, and it soon became evident 
that his lungs were more than affected. His cough in- 
creased and he began to lose what little flesh he had. 

One day Faber expressed his conviction to Wingfold 


THE LAWN. 


539 


that he was fighting the disease at the great disadvan- 
tage of having an unknown enemy to contend with. 

“ The fellow is unhappy,” he said, “ and if that lasts 
another month I shall throw up the sponge. He has a 
good deal of vitality, but it is yielding, and by that time 
he will be in a galloping consumption.” 

“ You must do your best for him,” said Wingfold, but 
in his heart he wished, with an honest affection, that he 
might not succeed. 

Leopold, however, seemed to have no idea of his con- 
dition, and the curate wondered what he would think or 
do were he to learn that he was dying. Would he in- 
sist on completing his confession, and urging on a trial ? 
He had himself told him all that had passed with the 
magistrate, and how things now were as he understood 
them, but it was plain that he had begun to be uneasy 
about the affair, and was doubtful at times whether all 
was as it seemed. The curate was not deceived. He 
had been present during a visit from Mr. Hooker, and 
nothing could be plainer than the impression out of which 
the good man spoke. Nor could he fail to suspect the 
cunning kindness of George Bascombe in the affair. 
But he did not judge that he had now the least call to 
interfere. The poor boy had done as much as lay either in 
or out of him in the direction of duty, and was daily be- 
coming more and more unfit either to originate or carry 
out a further course of action. If he was in himself ca- 
pable of anything more, he was, in his present state of 
weakness, utterly unable to cope with the will of those 
around him. 


540 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Faber would have had him leave the country for some 
southern climate, but he would not hear of it, and Helen, 
knowing to what extremities it might drive him, would 
not insist. Nor, indeed, was he now in a condition to 
be moved. Also the weather had grown colder, and he 
was sensitive to atmospheric changes as any creature 
of the elements. 

But after a fortnight, when it was now the middle of the 
autumn, it grew quite warm again, and he revived and 
made such progress that he was able to be carried into 
the garden every day. He sat in a chair on the lawn, 
with his feet on a sheepskin, and a fur cloak about him. 
And for all the pain at his heart, for all the misery in 
which no one could share, for all the pangs of a help- 
less jealousy, checked only by a gnawing remorse, both 
of which took refuge in the thought of following 
through the spheres until he found her, cast himself at 
her feet, spoke the truth, and became, if he might, her 
slave for ever, failing which he could but turn and go 
wandering through the spheres, seeking rest and find- 
ing none, save indeed there were some salvation even 
for him in the bosom of his God — I say that, somehow, 
with all this on the brain and in the heart of him, the sun- 
shine w’as yet pleasant in his eyes, while it stung him to 
the soul ; the soft breathing of the wind was pleasant to 
his cheek, while he cursed himself for the pleasure it 
gave him ; the few flowers that were left looked up at 
him mournfully, and he let them look, nor turned his 
eyes away, but let the tears gather and flow. The first 
agonies of the encounter of life and death were over 


THE LAWN. 


541 


and life was slowly wasting away. Oh what might not 
a little joy do for him ! But where was the joy to be 
found that could irradiate such a darkness, even for one 
fair memorial moment ? 

One hot noon Wingfold lay beside him on the grass. 
Neither had spoken for some time : the curate more and 
more shrunk from speech to v/hich his heart was not 
directly moved. As to what might be in season or out of 
season, he never would pretend to judge, he said, but 
even Balaam’s ass knew when he had a call to speak. He 
plucked a pale-red pimpeinell and handed it up over his 
head to Leopold. The youth looked at it for a moment 
and burst into tears. The curate rose hastily. 

“ It is so heartless of me,” said Leopold, “ to take 
pleasure in such a childish innocence as this ! 

“ It merely shows,” said the curate, laying his hand 
gently on his shoulder, “ that even in these lowly loveli- 
nesses, there is a something that has its root deeper than 
your pain ; that, all about us, in earth and air, wherever 
eye or ear can reach there is a power ever breath- 
ing itself forth in signs, now in a daisy, now in a wind- 
waft, a cloud, a sunset ; a power that holds constant and ^ 
sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within 
us ; that the same God who is in us, and upon whose 
tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all 
about us — inside, the Spirit ; outside, the Word. And 
the two are ever trying to meet in us ; and when they 
meet, then the sign without, and the longing within, 
become one in light, and the man no more walketh in 
darkness, but knoweth whither he goeth.” 


542 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


As he ended thus, the curate bent over and looked at 
Leopold. But the poor boy had not listened to a word 
he said. Something in his tone had soothed him, but 
the moment he ceased, the vein of his grief burst out 
bleeding afresh. He clasped his thin hands together, 
and looked up in an agony of hopeless appeal to the blue 
sky, now grown paler as in fear of the coming cold, 
though still the air was warm and sweet, and cried, 

“Oh ! if God would he good and unmake me, and let 
the darkness cover the place where once was me ! That 
would be like a good God ! All I should be sorry for 
then would be, that there was not enough of me left for 
a dim flitting Will-o’-the-wisp of praise, ever singing my 
thankfulness to him that I was no more. — Yet even 
then my deed would remain, for I dare not ask that she 
should die outright also — that would be to heap wrong 
upon wrong. What an awful thing being is ! Not even 
my annihilation could make up for my crime, or rid it 
out of the universe.” 

“True, Leopold!” said the curate. “Nothing but 
the burning love of God can rid sin out of anywhere, 
j But are you not forgetting him who surely knew what 
he undertook when he would save the world.? No 
more than you could have set that sun flaming over- 
head, with its million-miled billows and its limitless 
tempests of fire, can you tell what the love of God is, or 
what it can do for you, if only by enlarging your love 
with the inrush of itself. Few men have such a cry to 
raise to the Father as you, such a claim of sin and help- 
lessness to heave up before him, such a joy even to 


THE LAWN. 


543 


offer to the great Shepherd who cannot rest while one 
sheep strays from his flock, one prodigal haunts the dens 
of evil and waste. Cry to him, Leopold, my dear boy. 
Cry to him again and yet again, for he himself said that 
men ought always to pray and not to faint, for God did 
hear and would answer although he might seem long 
about it. I think we shall find one day that nobody, not 
the poet of widest sweep and most daring imagination, 
not the prophet who soars the highest in his ardour to 
justify the ways of God to men, not the child when he 
is most fully possessed of the angel that in heaven 
always beholds the face of the Father of Jesus, has come 
or could have come within sight of the majesty of 
his bestowing upon his children. For did he not, if the 
story be true, allow torture itself to invade the very 
soul’s citadel of his best beloved, as he went to seek the 
poor ape of a prodigal, stupidly grinning amongst his 
harlots 

Leopold did not answer, and the shadow lay deep on 
his face for a while ; but at length it began to thin, and 
at last a feeble quivering smile broke through the 
cloud, and he wept soft tears of refreshing. 

It was not that the youth had turned again from the 
hope of rest in the Son of Man ; but that, as every one 
knows who knows anything of the human spirit, there 
must be in its history days and seasons, mornings and 
nights, yea deepest midnights. It has its alternating sum- 
mer and winter, its storm and shine, its soft dews and its 
tempests of lashing hail, its cold moons and prophetic 
stars, its pale twilights of saddest memory, and its gold- 


544 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


en gleam of brightest hope. All these mingled and dis- 
placed each other in Leopold’s ruined world, where chaos 
had come again, but over whose waters a mightier 
breath was now moving. 

And now after much thought, the curate saw that he 
could not hope to transplant into the bosom of the lad 
the flowers of truth that gladdened his own garden ; he 
must sow the seed from which they had sprung, and 
that seed was the knowledge of the true Jesus. It was 
now the more possible to help him in this way, that 
the wild beast of his despair had taken its claws from 
his bosom, had withdrawn a pace or two, and couched 
watching. And Wingfold soon found that nothing 
calmed and brightened him like talk about Jesus. He 
had tried verse first — seeking out the best within his 
reach wherein loving souls have uttered their devotion 
to the man of men ; but here also the flowers would not 
be transplanted. How it came about he hardly knew, 
but he had soon drifted into rather than chosen another 
way, which way proved a right one : he would begin 
thinking aloud on some part of the gospel story, gene- 
rally that which was most in his mind at the time — talk- 
ing with himself, as it were, all about it. He began this one 
morning as he lay on the grass beside him, and that was 
the position in which he found he could best soliloquize. 
Now and then, but not often, Leopold would interrupt 
him, and perhaps turn the monologue into dialogue, but 
even then Wingfold would hardly ever look at him : he 
would not disturb him with more of his presence than 
he could help, or allow the truth to be flavoured with 


THE LAWN. 


545 


more of his individuality than was unavoidable. For 
every individuality, he argued, has a peculiar flavour to 
every other, and only Jesus is the pure simple humani- 
ty that every one can love, out and out, at once. In 
these mental meanderings, he avoided nothing, took 
notice of every difficulty, whether able to discuss it ful- 
ly or not, broke out in words of delight when his spirit 
was moved, nor hid his disappointment when he failed in 
getting at what might seem good enuogh to be the 
heart of the thing. It was like hatching a sermon in 
the sun instead of in the oven. Occasionally, when, 
having ceased, he looked up to know how his pupil 
fared, he found him fast asleep — sometimes with a 
smile, sometimes with a tear on his face. The sight 
would satisfy him well, Calm upon such a tormented 
sea must be the gift of God ; and the curate would then 
sometimes fall asleep himself— to start awake at the first 
far off sound of Helen’s dress as it swept a running fire 
of fairy fog-signals from the half-opened buds of the 
daisies, and the long heads of the rib grass, when he 
would rise and saunter a few paces aside, and she would 
bend over her brother, to see if he were warm and com- 
fortable. By this time all the old tenderness of her 
ministration had returned, nor did she seem any longer 
jealous of Wingfold’s. 

One day she came behind them as they talked. The 
grass had been mown that morning, and also she hap’ 
pened to be dressed in her riding habit and had gath- 
ered up the skirt over her arm, so that on this occasion 
she made no sound of sweet approach. Wingfold had 


546 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


been uttering one of his rambling monologues— in 
which was much without form, but nothing void. 

“ 1 don’t know quite,” he had been saying, “ what to 
think about that story of the woman they brought to 
Jesus in the temple — I mean how it got into that nook 
of the gospel of St. John, where it has no right place. — 
They didn’t bring her for healing or for the rebuke of her 
demon, but for condemnation, only they came to the 
wrong man for that. They dared not carry out the law 
of stoning, as they would have liked, 1 suppose, even if 
Jesus had condemned her, but perhaps they hoped 
rather to entrap him who was the'friend of sinners into 
saying something against the law^ — But what I want is, 
to know how it got there — just there, I mean betwixt 
the seventh and eighth chapters of St. John’s Gospel. 
There is no doubt of its being an interpolation — that the 
twelfth verse, I think it is, ought to join on to the fifty- 
second. The Alexandrian manuscript is the only one of 
the three oldest that has it, and it is the latest of the 
three. I did think once, but hastily, that it was our 
Lord’s text for saying / am the light of the world, but it 
follows quite as well on his offer of living water. One 
can easily see how the place would appear a very suita- 
ble one to any presumptuous scribe who wished to settle 
the question of where it should stand. — I wonder if St. 
John told the lovely tale as something he had forgotten 
after he had finished dictating all the rest. Or was it 
well known to all the evangelists, only no one of them 
was yet partaker enough of the spirit of him who was 
' the friend of sinners, to dare put it on written record, 


THE LAWN. 


547 


thinking it hardly a safe story to expose to the quarry- 
ing of men’s conclusions. But it doesn’t matter much ; 
the tale must be a true one. Only — to think of just 
this one story, of tenderest righteousness, floating 
about like a holy waif through the world of letters! — • 
a sweet gray dove of promise that can find no rest for 
the sole of its foot! Just this one story of all stories a 
kind of outcast ! and yet as a wanderer, oh how welcome ! 
Some manuscripts, I understand, have granted it a sort 
of outhouse-shelter at the end of the gospel of St. 
Luke. But it all matters nothing, so long as we can 
believe it ; and true it must be, it is so like him all 
through. And if it does go wandering as a stray through 
the gospels without place of its own, what matters it 
so long as it can find hearts enough to nestle in, and 
bring forth its young of comfort ! — Perhaps the woman 
herself told it, and, as with the woman of Samaria, some 
would and some would not believe her. — Oh ! the eyes 
that met upon her ! The fiery hail of scorn from those 
of the Pharisees — the light of eternal sunshine from 
those of Jesus ! — I was reading the other day, in one of 
the old Miracle Plays, how each that looked on while 
Jesus wrote with his finger on the ground, imagined he 
was writing down his individual sins, and was in terror 
lest his neighbour should come to know them.— And 
wasn't he gentle even with those to whom he was sharp- 
er than a two-edged sword ! and oh how gentle to her 
he would cover from their rudeness and wrong ! Let 
the sinless t hr (Tw ! And the sinners went out, and she 
followed — to sin no more. No, reproaches, you see ! 


548 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


No stirring up of the fiery snakes ! Only don’t do it 
again. — I don’t think she did it again : — do you }” 

It was just here that Helen came and stood behind 
Leopold’s chair. The curate lay on the grass, and nei- 
ther saw her. 


CHAPTER LXXXIII. 


HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN. 

UT why wasn’t he as gentle with good wo- 
men ?” said Leopold. 

“ Wasn’t he }” said the curate in some sur- 
prise. 

“He said Wkal have I to do with thee? to his own 
mother.” 

“ A Greek scholar should go to the Greek,” said the 
curate. “Our English is not perfect. You see she 
wanted to make him show off, and he thought how lit- 
tle she knew what he came 'to the world for. Her 
thoughts were so unlike his that he said. What have 
we in common ! It was a moan of the Godhead over 
the distance of its creature. Perhaps he thought : 
How then will you stand the shock when at length it 
comes ? But he looked at her as her own son ought to 
look at every blessed mother, and she read in his eyes 
no rebuke, for instantly, sure of her desire, she told 
them to do whatever he said.” 



550 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ I hope that’s the right way of it,” said Leopold, “ for 
I want to trust him out and out. But what do you 
make of the story of the poor woman that came about 
her daughter? Wasn’t he rough to her It always 
seemed to me such a cruel thing to talk of throwing the 
meat of the children to the dogs !” 

“ We cannot judge of the word until we know the 
spirit that gave birth to it. Let me ask you a question : 
What would you take for the greatest proof of down- 
right friendship a man could show you ?” 

“ That is too hard a question to answer all at once.” 

“ Well, I may be wrong, but the deepest outcome of 
friendship seems to me, on the part of the superior at 
least, the permission, or better still, the call, to share in 
his sufferings. And in saying that hard word to the 
poor Gentile, our Lord honored her thus mightily. He 
assumed for the moment the part of the Jew towards the 
Gentile, that he might, for the sake of all the world of 
Gentiles and Jews, lay bare to his Jewish followers the 
manner of spirit they were of, and let them see what a 
lovely humanity they despised in their pride of election. 
He took her to suffer with him for the salvation of the 
world. The cloud overshadowed them both, but what 
words immediately thereafter made a glory in her heart ! 
He spoke to her as if her very faith had reached an arm 
into the heavens, and brought therefrom the thing she 
sought. But I confess,” the curate went on, “those 
two passages have both troubled me. So I presume 
will everything that is God’s, until it becomes a strength 
and a light by revealing its true nature to the heart that 


HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN. 


551 


has grown capable of understanding it. The first sign 
of the coming capacity and the coming joy, is the anxi- 
ety and the question. — There is another passage, which, 
although it does not trouble me so much, I cannot yet 
get a right perception of. When Mary Magdalene took 
the Master of Death for the gardener — the gardener of 
the garden of the tombs ! no great mistake, was it ? — it 
is a lovely thing that mistaking of Jesus for the garden- 
er ! — how the holy and the lowly, yea the holy and the 
common meet on all sides ! Just listen to their morn- 
ing talk — the morning of the eternal open world to 
Jesus while the shadows of this narrow life still clustered 
around Mary : — I can give it you exactly, for I was 
reading it this very day. 

“ ‘ Woman, why weepest thou ? Whom seekest 
thou T 

“ ‘ Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou 
hast laid him, and I will take him away.’ 

“ ‘ Mary.’ 

“ ‘ Master !’ 

“ ‘ Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my 
Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I 
ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my 
God and your God.’ 

“ Why did he sajq Do not touch me? It could not be 
that there was any defilement to one in the new body 
of the resurrection, from contact with one still in the 
old garments of humanity. But could it be that there 
was danger to her in the contact } Was there something 
in the new house from heaven hurtful to the old taber- 


552 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


nacle ? I can hardly believe it. Perhaps it might be. 
But we must look at the reason the Master gives — only 
of all words hard to understand, the little conjunctions 
are sometimes the hardest. What can that for mean } 

‘ Touch me noiyfor I am not yet ascended to my Father.’ 
Does it mean, ‘ I must first present myself to my Father ; 
I must first have his hand laid on this body new 
risen from the grave ; I must go home first ?’ The 
child must kiss his mother first, then his sisters and 
brothers : was it so with Jesus ? Was he so glad in his 
father, that he must carry even the human body he had 
rescued eternal from the grave, home to shew him first ? 
There are many difficulties about the interpretation, and 
even if true, it w’ould still shock every heart whose de- 
votion was less than absolutely child-like. Was not 
God with him, as close to him as even God could come 
to his eternal son — in him — one with him, all the time ? 
How could he get nearer to him by going to heaven ? 
What headquarters, what court of place and circum- 
stance should the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible hold ? 
And yet if from him flow time and space, although he can 
not be subject to them; if his son could incarnate him- 
self — cast the living, responsive, elastic, flowing, evan- 
ishing circumstance of a human garment around him ; 
if, as Novalis says, God can become whatever he can 
create, then may there not be some central home of 
God, holding relation even to time and space and 
sense ? But I am bewildered about it. — Jesus stood 
then in the meeting point of both worlds, or rather in the 
skirts of the great w'orld that infolds the less. I am 


HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN. 


553 


talking like a baby, for my words can not compass or 
even represent my thoughts. This world looks to us the 
natural and simple one, and so it is — absolutely fitted to 
our need and education. But there is that in us which 
is not at home in this world, which I believe holds se- 
cret relations with every star or perhaps rather with 
that in the heart of God whence issued every star, di- 
verse in kind and character as in color and place and 
motion and light. ^ To that in us this world is so far 
strange and unnatural and unfitting, and we need a yet 
homelier home. Yea, no home at last will do but the 
home of God’s heart. Jesus, I say, was now looking, on 
one side, into the region of a deeper life, where his peo- 
ple, those that knew their own when they saw him, 
would one day find thernselves tenfold at home ; while, 
on the other hand, he was looking into the region of 
their present life, which custom and faithlessness makes 
them afraid to leave. But we need not fear what the 
new conditions of life will bring, either for body or heart, 
they will be nearer and sweeter to our deeper being as 
Jesus is nearer and dearer than any man because he is 
more human than any. He is all that we can love or 
look for, and at the root of that very loving and look- 
ing. — ‘ In my Father’s house are many mansions,’ he 
said. Matter, time, space, are all God’s, and whatever may 
become of our phik»sophies, whatever he does with or 
in respect of time, place, and what we call matter, his 
doing must be true in philosophy as well as fact. But 
1 am wandering.” 

The curate was wandering, but the liberty of wander- 


554 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ing was essential to his talking with the kind of freedom 
and truth he wanted to mediate betwixt his pupil and the 
lovely things he saw. 

“ I wonder where the penitent thief was all the time,” 
said Leopold. 

• “ Yes, that also is a difficulty. There again come in the 
bothering time and space, bothering in their relation to 
heavenly things, I mean. On the Friday, the penitent 
thief, as you call him, was to be with Jesus in Paradise ; 
and nov, it was Sunday, and Jesus said he had not yet 
been up to see his Father. Some would say, I am too 
literal, too curious ; what can Friday and Sunday have to 
do with Paradise } But words 7ncan in both worlds, for 
they are not two but one — surely at least when Jesus 
thinks and speaks of them ; and there can be no wrong 
in feeling ever so blindly and dully after what they mean. 
Such humble questioning can do no harm, even if, in 
the face of the facts, the questions be as far off and silly 
— in the old sweet meaning of the word— as those of 
any infant concerning a world he has not proved. — But 
about Mary Magdalene ; He must have said the word 
Touch me not. That could not have crept in.-^ It is too 
hard for an interpolation, I think ; and if no interpola- 
tion, it must mean some deep good thing we don’t un- 
derstand. One thing we can make sure of : it was 
nothing that should hurt her ; for see what follows. 
But for that, -when he said Touch me not, for I am not yet 
ascended to my Father, she might have thought — ‘ Ah ! 
thou hast thy Father to go to and thou will leave us for 
him.’ — But, he went on, go to my brethren and say unto 


HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN. 


555 


them : I ascend tmto my Father, -and your father ; AND 
MY GOD AND YOUR GOD. What more could she want } 
Think : the Father of Jesus, with whom, in all his 
knowledge and all his suffering, the grand heart was 
perfectly, exultingly satisfied,— that Father he calls our 
Father too. He shares with his brethren— of his best, 
his deepest, his heartiest, most secret delight, and 
makes it iheir and his most open joy: he shares his 
eternal Father with us, his perfect God with his breth- 
ren. And whatever his not having ascended to him 
may mean, we see, with marvel and joy, that what delayed 
him — even though, for some reason perfect in tender- 
ness as in truth, he would not be touched — was love to 
Maiy Magdalene and his mother and his brethren. He 
could not go to the Father without comforting them 
first. And certainly whatever she took the Touch inenot 
to mean or point at, it was nothing that hurt her. —It just 
strikes me — is it possible he said it in order to turn the 
overwhelming passion of her joy, which after such a re- 
storation would have clung more than ever to the visible 
presence, and would be ready to suffer the pains of 
death yet again when he parted from her — might it be 
to turn that torrent into the wider and ever widening 
channel cf joy in his everlasting presence to the inner- 
most being, his communion, heart to heart, with every 
child of his Father } In our poor weakness and narrow- 
ness and self-love, even of Jesus the bodily may block 
out the spiritual nearness, which, however in most 
moods we may be unable to realize the fact, is and re- 
mains a thing unutterably lovelier and better and dearer— 


556 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


enhancing tenfold what vision of a bodily presence may 
at some time be granted us. But how any woman can 
help casting herself heart and soul at the feet of such a 
lowly grandeur, such a tender majesty, such a self-dissolv- 
ing perfection — I can not imagine. The truth must be 
that those who kneel not have not seen. You do not 
once read of a woman being against him — except indeed 
it was his own mother, when she thought he was going all 
astray and forgetting his high mission. The divine love 
in him towards his Father in heaven and his brethren 
of men, was ever melting down his conscious individu- 
ality in sweetest showers upon individual hearts ; he 
came down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers 
that water the earth. No woman, no man surely ever 
saw him as he was and did not worship !” 

Helen turned and glided back into the house, and 
neither knew she had been there 


CHAPTER LXXXIV. 


DELIVERANCE. 

LL that could be done for Leopold by tender- 
est sisterly care under the supervision of Mr. 
Faber, who believed in medicine less than in 
good nursing, was well supplemented by the 
brotherly ministrations of Wingfold, who gave all the 
time he could honestly spare from his ordinary work to 
soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it be- 
came clearer every week that nothing would avail to 
entice the- torn roots of his being to clasp again the soil 
of the world : he was withering away out of it. Ere 
long symptoms appeared which no one could well mis- 
take, and Lingard himself knew that he was dying. 
Wingfold had dreaded that his discovery of the fact 
might reveal that he had imagined some atonement in 
the public confession he desired to make, and that, 
when he found it denied him, he would fall back into 
despair. But he was with him at the moment, and his 
bearing left no ground for anxiety. A gleam of glad- 



558 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ness from below the horizon of his spirit, shot up, like 
the aurora of a heavenly morning, over the sky of his 
countenance. He glanced at his friend, smiled, and 
said, 

“ It has killed me too, and that is a comfort.” 

The curate only looked his reply. 

“ They say,” resumed Leopold, after a while, “ that 
God takes the will for the deed : — do you think so ?" 

“Certainly, if it be a true genuine will.” 

“ I am sure I meant to give myself up,” said Leopold. 
“ I had not the slightest idea that they were fooling me. 
I know it now, but what can I do I am so weak, I 
should only die on the way.” 

He tried to rise, but fell back in the chair. 

“ Oh !” he sighed, “ isn’t it good of God to let me 
die ! Who knows what he may do for me on the other 
side ! Who can tell what the bounty of a God like Je- 
sus may be !” 

A vision rose before the mind’s eye of the curate : — 
Emmeline kneeling for Leopold’s forgiveness ; but he 
wisely held his peace. The comfort of the sinner must 
come from the forgiveness of God, not from the favor- 
able judgment of man mitigating the harshness of his 
judgment of himself. Wingfold’s business was to 
start him well in the world whither he was going. He 
must fill his scrip with the only wealth that would not 
dissolve in the waters of the river — that was, the know- 
ledge of Jesus. 

It shot a terrible pang to the heart of Helen, herself, 
for all her suffering, so full of life, when she learned 


DELIVERANCE. 


559 


that her darling must die. Yet was there no small con- 
solation mingled with the shock. Fear vanished, and 
love returned with grief in twofold strength. She flew to 
him, and she who had been so self-contained, so com- 
posed, so unsubmissive to any sway of feeling, broke into 
such a storm of passionate affection, that the vexilla mortis 
answered from his bosom, flaunting themselves in crim- 
son before her eyes. In vain, for Leopold’s sake, the 
curate had sought to quiet her : she had resented his 
interference ; but this result of her impetuosity speedily 
brought her to her senses, and set her to subdue her- 
self. 

The same evening Leopold insisted on dictating to 
the curate his confession, which done, he signed it, 
making him and Helen attest the signature. This doc- 
ument Wingfold took charge of, promising to make 
the right use of it, whatever he should on reflection con- 
clude that to be ; after which Leopold’s mind seemed at 
ease. 

His sufferings from cough and weakness and fever 
now augmented with greater rapidity, but it was plain 
from the kind of light in his eye, and the far-look 
which was yet not retrospective, that hope and expecta- 
tion were high in him. He had his times of gloom, 
when the dragon of the past crept out of its cave, and 
tore him afresh ; but the prospect of coming deliver- 
ance strengthened him. 

“ Do you really think,” he said once to the curate, 
“that I shall ever see Emmeline again ?” 

“Truly I hope so,” answered his friend, “and could 


560 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


argue upon the point. But I think the best way, when 
doubt comes as to any thing you would like to be 
true, is just to hide yourself in God, as the child would 
hide from the dark in the folds of his mother’s man- 
tle.” 

“ But aunt would say, if she knew, that, dying as she 
did, Emmeline could not be saved.” 

“ Some people may have to be a good deal astonished 
as to what can and can not be,” returned the curate. 
“ But never mind what people say : make your appeal 
to the Saviour of men about whatever troubles you. 
Cry to the faithful creator, his Father. To be a faithful 
creator needs a might of truth and loving kindness of 
which our narrow hearts can ill conceive. Ask much 
of God, my boy, and be very humble and very hoping.” 

After all such utterances, Leopold would look his 
thanks, and hold his peace. 

“ I wish it was over,” he said once. 

“So do I,” returned the curate. “But be of good 
courage. I think nothing will be given you to bear 
that you will not be able to bear.” 

“ I can bear a great deal more than I have had yet. 1 
don’t think I shall ever complain. That would be to 
take myself out of his hands, and I have no hope any- 
where else. — Are you any surer about him, sir, than 
you used to be ?” 

“ At least I hope in him far more,” answered Wing- 
fold. 

“ Is that enough ?” 

. “ No, I want more.” 


DELIVERANCE. 


561 


“ I wish I could come back and tell you that I am 
alive and all is true.” 

“ I would rather have the natural way of it, and get 
the good of not knowing first.” 

“ But if I could tell you I had found God then that 
would make 5^ou sure.” 

Wingfold could not help a smile ; — as if any assur- 
ance from such a simple soul could reach the questions 
that tossed his troubled spirit ! 

“ I think I shall find all I want in Jesus Christ,” he 
said. 

“ But you can't see him, you know.” 

“ Perhaps I can do better. And at all events I can 
wait,” said the curate. “ Even if he would let me, I 
would not see him one moment before he thought it 
best. I would not be out of a doubt or difficulty an 
hour sooner than he would take me.” 

Leopold gazed at him and said no more. 


CHAPTER LXXXV. 


THE MEADOW. 

S the disease advanced, his desire for fresh air 
and freedom grew to a great longing. One 
hot day, whose ardors, too strong for the 
leaves whose springs had begun to dry up, 
were burning them “ yellow and black and pale and 
hectic red,” the fancy seized him to get out of the gar- 
den with its dipt box-trees and cypresses, into the 
meadow beyond. There a red cow was switching her 
tail as she gathered her milk from the world, and look- 
ing as if all were well. He liked the look of the cow, 
and the open meadow, and wanted to share it with her 
he said. Helen, with the anxiety of a careful nurse, 
feared it might hurt him. 

“What does it matter?” he returned. “Is life so 
sweet that every moment more of it is a precious boon ? 
After I’m gone a few days, you won’t know a week 
from an hour of me. What a weight it will be off you ! 
I envy you all the relief of it. It will be to you just 
what it would be to me to get into that meadow.” 

Helen made haste to let him have his will. They 



THE MEADOW. 


563 


prepared a sort of litter, and the curate and the coach- 
man carried him. Hearing what they were about, Mrs. 
Ramshorn hurried into the garden to protest, but pro- 
tested in vain, and joined the little procession, walking 
with Helen, like a second mourner, after the bier. 
They crossed the lawn, and through a double row of 
small cypresses went winding down to the underground 
passage, as if to the tomb itself. They had not thought 
of opening the door first, and the place was dark and 
sepulchral. Helen hastened to set it wide. 

“ Lay me down for a- moment,” said Leopold. 
“ — Here I lie in my tomb ! How soft and brown the 
light is ! I should not mind lying here, half-asleep, half- 
awake, for centuries, if only I had the hope of a right 
good waking at last.”. 

A flood of fair light flashed in sweet torrent into the 
place — and there, framed in the doorway, but far across 
the green field, stood the red cow, switching her tail. 

“ And here comes my resurrection !” cried Leopold. 
“ I have not had long to wait for it — have I ?” 

He smiled a pained content as he spoke, and they 
bore him out into the sun and air. They set him down 
in the middle of the field in a low chair — not far from a 
small clump of trees, through which the footpath led to 
the stile whereon the curate was seated when first he 
saw the Polwarths. Mrs. Ramshorn found the fancy of 
the sick man pleasant for the hale, and sent for her 
knitting. Helen sat down empty-handed on the wool at 
her brother’s feet, and Wingfold, taking a book from 
his pocket, withdrew to the trees. 


564 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


Ke had not read long, sitting within sight and call of 
the group, when Helen came to him. 

“ He seems inclined to go to sleep,” she said. “ Per- 
haps if you would read something, it would send him 
off.” 

“ I will with pleasure,” he said, and returning with 
her, sat down on the grass. 

“ May I read you a few verses I came upon the other 
day, Leopold ?” he asked. 

“ Please do,” answered the invalid, rather sleepily. 

I will not pledge myself that the verses belonged to 
the book Wingfold held before him, but here they are. 
He read them slowly, and as evenly and softly and 
rhythmically as he could. 


They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind, 
The devil-torn, the sick, the sore ; 

Thy heart their well of life they find. 

Thine ear their open door. 


Ah ! who can tell the joy in Palestine — 

What smiles and tears of rescued throngs ! 
Their lees of life were turned to wine. 

Their prayers to shouts and songs ! 


The story dear our wise men fable call, 
Give paltry facts the mighty range ; 
To me it seems just what should fall, 
And nothing very strange. 


THE MEADOW. 


565 


But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore, 

I scarce would care for cure to ask ; 

Another prayer should haunt thy door — 

Set thee a harder task. 

If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, 

Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest ! 

Had ever heart more need of thine. 

If thine indeed hath rest? 

Thy word, thy hand right soon aid scare the bane 
That in their bodies death did breed ; 

If thou canst cure my deeper pain. 

Then art thou Lord indeed. 

I^eopold smiled sleepily as V/ingfold read, and ere the 
reading was over, slept. 

“ What can the little object want here said Mrs. 
Ramshorn. 

Wingfold looked up and seeing who it was approach- 
ing them, said, 

“Oh ! that :s Mr. Polwarth, who keeps the park- 
gate.” 

“ Nobody can well mistake him,'’ returned Mrs. Rams- 
horn. “ Everybody knows the creature.” 

“ Few people know him really,” said Wingfold. 

“ I ^ave heard that he is an oddity in mind as well as 
in bod3%” said Mrs. Ramshorn. 

“ He is a friend of mine,” rejoined the curate. “I 
will go and meet him. He wants to know how Leopold 


568 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


things, reaching even to the archiepiscopal, which he 
had put half-humorously, and yet in thorough earnest, 
for the ear of Wingfold only. He was little enough de- 
sirous of pursuing the conversation with Mrs. Rams- 
horn : Charity herself does not require of a man to cast 
his precious things at the feet of my lady Disdain ; but 
he must reply. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ the great evil in the church has al- 
ways been the presence in it of persons unsuited for 
the work there required of them. One very simple 
sifting rule would be, that no one should be admitted to 
holy orders who had not first proved himself capable 
of making a better living in some other calling.” 

“ I can not go with you so far as that — so few careers 
are open to gentlemen,” rejoined Mrs. Ramshorn. 
“ Besides — take the bar for instance ; the forensic style 
a man must there acquire would hardly become the 
pulpit. But it would not be a bad rule that every one, 
for admission to holy orders, should be possessed of 
property sufficient at least to live upon. With that for 
a foundation, his living would begin at once to tell, and 
he would immediately occupy the superior position 
every clergyman ought to have.’’ 

“ What I was thinking of,” said Polwarth, “was main-, 
ly the experience in life he would gather by having to 
make his own living ; that, behind the counter or the 
plough, or in the workshop, he would come to know 
men and their struggles and their thoughts — ” 

“Good heavens !” exclaimed Mrs. Ramshorn. “ But 
I must be under some misapprehension ! It is not pos- 


THE MEADOW. 


569 


sible that you can be speaking of the church— oi the 
clerical profession. The moment that is brought within 
‘the reach of such people as you describe, that moment 
the church sinks to the level of the catholic priesthood.” 

“ Say, rather, to the level of Jeremy Taylor,” re- 
turned Polwarth, “ who was the son of a barber ; or of 
Tillotson,' who was the son of a clothier, or something 
of the sort, and certainly a fierce dissenter. His ene- 
mies said the archbishop himself was never baptized. 
By the way, he was not ordained till he was thirty — 
and that bears on what I was just saying to Mr. Wing- 
fold, that I would have no one ordained till after forty, 
by which time he would know whether he had any real 
call or only a temptation to the church, from the base 
hope of an easy living.” 

By this time Mrs. Ramshorn had had more than 
enough of it. The man was a leveller, a chartist, a 
positivist — a despiser of dignities! 

“ Mr. Mr. I don’t know your name — you will 

oblige me by uttering no more such vile slanders in my 
company. You are talking about what you do not in 
the least understand^ The man who does not respect the 
religion of his native country is capable of — of — of any-^ 
thing . — I am astonished, Mr. Wing fold, at your allowing 
a member of your congregation to speak with so little 
regard for the feelings of the clergy. You forget, sir, 
when you attribute what you call base motives to the 
cloth — you forget who said the laborer was worthy of 
his hire.” 

“ I hope not, madam- I only venture to suggest that 


570 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


though the laborer is worthy of his hire, not every man 
IS worthy of the labor.” 

Wingfold was highly amused at the turn things had' 
taken. Polwarth looked annoyed at having allowed 
himself to be beguiled into such an utterly useless beat- 
ing of the air. 

“ My friend has some rather peculiar notions, Mrs. 
Ramshorn,” said the curate ; “ but you must admit that 
it was your approval that encouraged him to go on.” 

“ It is quite as well to know what people think,” an- 
swered Mrs. Ramshorn, pretending she had drawn 
him out from suspicion. “My husband used to say 
that very few of the clergy had any notion of the envy 
and opposition of the lower orders, both to them per- 
sonally, and the doctrines they taught. To low human 
nature the truth has always been unpalatable.” 

What precisely she meant by the truth it would be 
hard to say, but if the visual embodiment of it was not 
a departed dean, it was at least always associated in her 
mind with a cathedral choir, and a portly person in silk 
stockings. 

Here happily Leopold woke, and his eyes fell upon 
the gate-keeper. 

“Ah, Mr. Polwarth ! I am so glad to see you !” he 
said. “I am getting on, you see. It will be over 
soon.” 

“ I see,” replied Polwarth, going up to him, and 
taking his offered hand in both his. “ I could al- 
most envy you for having got so near the end of your 
•troubles.” 


THE MEADOW. 


571 


“ Are you sure it will be the end of them, sir ?” 

“ Of some of them at least, I hope, and those the 
worst. I can not be sure of anything but that all 
things work together for good to them that love 
God.” 

“ I don’t know yet whether I do love God.” 

“ Not the Father of Jesus Christ ?” 

“ If God is really just like him, I don’t see how any 
man could help loving him. But, do you know? I am 
terrified sometimes at the thought of seeing ?/y/ father. 
He was such a severe man ! I am afraid he will scorn 
me.” 

“ Never — if he has got into heavenly ways. And you 
have your mother there too, have you not ?” 

“ Oh ! yes ; I did not think of that. I don’t remem- 
ber much of her.” 

“ Any how you have God there, and you must rest 
in him. He will not forget you, for that would be 
ceasing to be God. If God were to forget for one mo- 
ment, the universe would grow black — vanish — rush 
out again from the realm of law and order into chaos 
and night.” 

“ But I have been wicked.” 

“ The more need you have, if possible, of your Father 
in heaven.” 

Here Mrs. Ramshorn beckoned the attendance of the 
curate where she sat a few yards off on the other side 
of Leopold. She was a little ashamed of having conde- 
scended to lose her temper, and when the curate went 
up to her, said, with an attempt at gaiety : 


572 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Is your odd little friend, as you call him, all ?’' 

And she tapped her lace cap carefully with her finger. 

“ Rather more so than most people,” answered Wing- 
fold. “ He is a very remarkable man.” 

“ He speaks as if he had seen better days — though 
where he can have gathered such detestable revolution- 
ary notions, I can’t think.” 

“ He is a man of education, as you see,” said the 
curate. 

“You don’t mean he has been to Oxford or Cam- 
bridge ?” 

“ No. His education has been of a much higher sort 
than is generally found there. He knows ten times as 
much as most university men.” 

“ Ah, yes ; but that goes for nothing : he hasn’t the 
standing. And if he had been to Oxford, he never 
could have imbibed such notions. Besides — his man- 
ners ! To speak of the clergy as he did in the hearing 
of one whose whole history is bound up with the 
church !” 

She meant herself, not Wingfold. 

“ But of course,” she went on, there must be some- 
thing very wrong with him to know so much as you say, 
and occupy such a menial position ! Nothing but agate- 
keeper, and talk like that about bishops and what not ! 
People that are crooked in body are always crooked in 
mind too. I dare say now he has quite a coterie of 
friends and followers amongst the lower orders in Glas- 
ton. He’s just the sort of man to lead the working 
classes astray. No doubt he is a very interesting study 


THE MEADOW. 


573 


for a young man like you, but you must take care ; you 
may be misunderstood. A young clergyman cant be 
too cautious if he has any hope of rising in his profes- 
sion. — A gate-keeper indeed !” 

“ Wasn’t it something like that David wanted to be 
said the curate. 

“ Mr. Wingfold, I never allow any such foolish jests 
in my hearing. It was a </(?i7r-keeper the Psalmist said 
— and to the house of God, not a nobleman's park.” 

” A verger, I suppose,” thought Wingfold.— “ Seri- 
ously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a crea- 
ture is tfie wisest man I know,” he said. 

“ Likely enough, in your judgment, Mr. Wingfold,” 
said the dean’s widow, and drew herself up. 

The curate accepted his dismissal, and joined the little 
man by Leopold’s chair. 

” I wish you two could be with me when I am dying,” 
said Leopold. 

“ If you will let your sister know your wish, you may 
easily have it,” said the curate. 

” It will be just like saying good-bye at the pier-head, 
and pushing off alone — you can’t get more than one into 
the boat — out, out, alone, into the infinite ocean of — 
nobody knows what or where,” said Leopold. 

“ Except those that are there already, and they will 
be waiting to receive you,” said Polwarth. “ You may 
well hope, if you have friends to see you off, you will 
have friends to welcome you too. But I think it’s not 
so much like setting off from the pier-head, as getting 
down the side of the ocean-ship, to land at the pier-head, 


574 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


where your friends are all standing looking out for 
you.” 

“ Well ! I don’t know !” said Leopold, with a sigh of 
weariness. I’m thankful sometimes that I’ve grown 
stupid. I suppose it’s with dying. I didn’t use to feel so. 
Sometimes I seem not to know or care any thing about 
any thing. I only want to stop coughing and aching 
and go to sleep.” 

“Jesus was glad to give up his spirit into his Father’s 
hands. He was very tired before he got away.” 

“Thank you. Thank you. I have him. He is some- 
where. You can’t mention his name but it brings me 
something to live and hope for. If he is there, all will 
be well. And if I do get too tired to care for any thing, 
he won’t mind ; he will only let me go to sleep, and 
wake me up again by and by when I am rested.” 

He closed his eyes. 

“ I want to go to bed,” he said. 

They carried him into the house. 


i 


CHAPTER LXXXVI. 


RACHEL AND LEOPOLD. 

VERY day after this, so long as the weather 
continued warm, it was Leopold’s desire to 
be carried out to the meadow. Once, at his 
earnest petition, instead of setting him 
down in the usual place, they went on with him into 
the park, but he soon wished to be taken back to the 
meadow. He did not like the trees to come between 
him and his bed ; they made him feel like a rabbit that 
was too far from its hole, he said ; and he was never 
tempted to try it again. 

Regularly too every day, about one o’clock, the 
gnome-like form of the gate-keeper would issue from 
the little door in the park fence, and come marching 
across the grass towards Leopold’s chair, which was set 
near the small clump of trees already mentioned. The 
curate was almost always there, not talking much to the 
invalid, but letting him know every now and then by 
some little attention or word, or merely by showing 
himself, that he was near. Sometimes he would take 



576 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


refuge from the heat, which the Indian never felt too 
great, amongst the trees, and there would generally be 
thinking out what he wanted to say to his people the 
next Sunday. One thing he found strange, and could 
not satisfy himself concerning, namely, that although 
his mind was so much occupied with Helen that he 
often seemed unable to think consecutively upon any 
subject, he could always foresee his sermon- best when, 
seated behind one of the trees, he could by moving his 
head see her at work beside Leopold’s chair. But the 
thing that did carry him through became plain enough 
to him afterwards : his faith in God was all the time 
growing — and that through what seemed at the time 
only a succession of interruptions. Nothing is so ruin- 
ous to progress in which effort is needful, as satisfaction 
with apparent achievement ; that ever sounds a halt ; 
but Wingfold’s experience was that no sooner did he 
set his foot on the lowest hillock of self-gratulation, than 
some fresh difficulty came that threw him prostrate ; 
and he rose again only in the strength of the necessity 
for deepening and broadening his foundations that he 
might build yet higher, trust yet farther: that was the 
only way not to lose everything. He was gradually 
learning that his faith must be an absolute one, claiming 
from God everything the love of a perfect Father could 
give, or the needs he had created in his child could de- 
sire ; that he must not look to himself first for help, or im- 
agine that the divine was only the supplement to the 
w^eakness and failure of the human ; that the highest 
effort of the human was to lay hold of the divine. He 


RACHEL AND LEOPOLD. 


577 


learned that he could keep no simplest law in its loveli- 
ness until he was possessed of the same spirit whence 
that law sprung ; that he could not even love Helen 
aright, simply, perfectly, unselfishly, except through the 
presence of the originating Love ; that the one thing < 
wherein he might imitate the free creative will of God 
was, to will the presence and power of that will which 
gave birth to his. It was the vital growth of this faith 
even when he was too much troubled to recognize the 
fact, that made him strong in the midst of weakness ; when 
the son of man cried out. Let this cup pass, the son of God 
in him could yet cry. Let thy will be done. He could ‘ inhab- 
it trembling,' and yet be brave. Mrs. Ramshorn gene- 
rally came to the meadow to see how the invalid was fitter 
he was settled, but she seldom staid : she was not fond 
of nursing, neither was there any need of her assistance ; 
and as Helen never dreamed now of opposing the small- 
est wish of her brother, there was no longer any ob- 
struction to the visits of Polwarth, which were eagerly 
looked for by Leopold. 

One day the little man did not appear, but soon after ^ 
his usual time the still more gnome-like form of his lit- 
tle niece came scrambling rather than walking over the 
.meadow. Gently and modestly, almost shyly, she came 
up to Helen, made her a courtesy like a village school- 
girl, and said while she glanced at Leopold now and 
then with an ocean of tenderness in her large, clear wo- 
man-eyes : 

“ My uncle is sorry, Miss Lingard, that he can not come 
to see your brother to-day, but he is laid up with an at 


578 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


tack of asthma. He wished Mr. Lingard to know that 
he was thinking oi him : — shall I tell you just what 
he said ?” 

Helen bent her neck : she did not feel much interest 
in the matter. But Leopold said. 

“ Every word of such a good rpan is precious : tell me, 
please.” 

Rachel turned to him with the flush of a white rose 
on her face. 

“ I asked him, sir — ‘ Shall I tell him you are praying 
for him.?’ and he said, ‘No. I am not exactly pray- 
ing for him but I am thinking of God and him to- 
gether.” ’ 

The tears rose in Leopold’s eyes. Rachel lifted her 
baby-hand and stroked the dusky long-fingered one that 
lay .upon the arm of the chair. 

“ Dear Mr. Lingard,” she said, — Helen stopped in the 
middle of an embroidery stitch and gave her a look as 
if she were about to ask for her testimonials — “ I could 
well wish, if it pleased God, that I were as near home 
as you.” 

Leopold took her hand in his. 

“ Do you suffer then .?” he asked. 

“ Just look at me,” she answered with a smile that 
was very pitiful, though she did not mean it for such, 

‘ — shut up all my life in this epitome of deformity ! But 
I ain’t grumbling : that would be a fine thing ! My 
house is not so small but God can get into it. Only 
you can’t think how tired 1 often am of it.” 

“ Mr. Wingfold was telling me yesterday that some 


RACHEL AND LEOPOLD. 


579 


people fancy St. Paul was little and misshapen, and that 
that was his thorn in the flesh." 

“ I don’t think that can be true, or he would never 
have compared his body to a tabernacle, for, oh dear ! 
it won’t stretch an inch to give a body room. I don’t 
think either, if that had been the case, he would have 
said he didn’t want it taken off but another put over it. 
I do want mine taken off me, and a downright good new 
one put on instead — something not quite so far off 
your sister’s there, Mr. Lingard. But I’m ashamed of 
talking like this. It came of wanting to tell you I can’t 
be sorry you are going when I should so dearly like to 
go myself.” 

• “ And I would gladly stay awhile, and that in a house 
no bigger than yours, if I had a conscience of the same 
sort in my back-parlor,” said Leopold smiling. “ But 
when I am gone the world will be the cleaner for it* — Do 
you know about God the same way your uncle does, 
Miss Polwarth ?” 

“ I hope I do — a little. I doubt if any body knows as 
much as he does,” she returned, very seriously. ” But 
God knows about us all the same, and he don’t limit 
his goodness to us by our knowledge of him. It’s so 
wonderful that he can be all to everybody ! That is his 
Godness, you know. We can’t be all to any one per- 
son. Do what we will, we can’t let any body see into 
us even. We are all in bits and spots. But I fancy it’s 
a sign that we come of God that we don t like it. How 
gladly I would help you, Mr. Lingard, and I can do 
nothing for you.— I’m afraid your beautiful sister thinks 


580 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


me very forward. But she don’t know what it is to lie 
awake all nip^ht sometimes, think-thinking about my 
beautiful brothers and sisters that I can't get near to 
do anything for.” 

“Whatan odd creature!” thought Helen, to whom 
her talk conveyed next to nothing. “ But I dare say 
they are both out of their minds. Poor things I they 
must have a hard time of it with one thing and 
another !” 

“ I beg your pardon again for talking so much,” con- 
cluded Rachel, and, with a courtesy first to the one then 
to the other, walked away. Her gait was no square 
march like her uncle’s, but a sort of sidelong propulsion, 
rendered more laborious by the thick grass of the 
meadow. 



f 


CHAPTER LXXXVII. 

THE BLOOD-HOUND. 

NEED not follow the steps by which the 
inquiry office became so far able to enlight- 
en the mother of Emmeline concerning the 
person and habits of the visitor to the de- 
serted shaft, that she had now come to Glaston in pur- 
suit of yet farther discovery concerning him. She had 
no plan in her mind, and as yet merely intended going 
to church and everywhere else where people congre- 
gated, in the hope of something turning up to direct 
inquiry. Not a suspicion of Leopold had ever crossed 
her. She did not even know that he had a sister in 
Glaston, for Emmeline’s friends had not all been inti- 
mate with her parents. 

On the ijiorning after her arrival, she went out early 
to take a walk, and brood over her cherished ven- 
geance ; and finding her way into the park, wandered 
about in it for some time. Leaving it at length by an- 
other gate, and inquiring the way to Glaston, she was 
directed to a footpath that would lead her thither 



582 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


across the fields. Following this she came to a stile, and 
being rather weary with her long walk, sat down on it. 

The day was a grand autumnal one. But nature had 
no charms for her. Indeed had she not been close 
shut in the gloomy chamber of her own thoughts, she 
would not thus have walked abroad alone ; for nature 
was to her a dull, featureless void ; while her past was 
scarcely of the sort to invite retrospection, and her 
future was clouded. 

It so fell that just then Leopold was asleep in his 
chair, — every morning he slept a little soon after being 
carried out, — and that chair was in its usual place in the 
meadow, with the clump of trees between it and the 
stile. Wingfold was seated in the shade of the trees, 
but Helen, happening to want something for her work, 
went to him and committed her brother to his care un- 
til she should return, whereupon he took her place. 
Almost the same moment, however, he spied Polwarth 
coming from the little door in the fence, and went to 
meet him. When he turned, he saw, to his surprise, a 
lady standing beside the sleeping youth, and gazing at 
him with a strange intentness. Polwarth had seen her 
come from the clump of trees, and supposed her a 
friend. The curate walked hastily back, fearing he 
might wake and be startled at sight of th^ stranger. 
So intent was the gazing lady, that he was within a few 
yards of her before she heard him. She started, gave one 
glance at the curate, and hurried away towards the town. 
There was an agitation in her movements that Wing- 
fold did not like ; a suspicion crossed his mind, and he 


THE BLOOD-HOUND. 


583 


resolved to follow her. In his turn he made over his 
charge to Polwarth, and set off after the lady. 

The moment the eyes of Emmeline’s mother fell 
upon the countenance of Leopold, whom, notwith- 
standing the change that suffering had caused, she 
recognized at once, partly by the peculiarity of his com- 
plexion, the suspicion, almost conviction, awoke in her 
that here was the murderer of her daughter. That he 
looked so ill seemed only to confirm the likelihood. 
Her first idea was to wake him and see the effect of 
her sudden presence. Finding he was attended, how- 
ever, she hurried away to inquire in the town and dis- 
cover all she could about him. 

A few moments after, Polwarth had taken charge of 
him, and while he stood looking on him tenderly, the 
youth woke with a start. 

“ Where is Helen ?” he said. 

“ I have not seen her. Ah, here she comes !” 

“ Did you find me all alone, then ?” 

“Mr. Wingfold was with you. He gave you up to 
me, because he had to go into the town.” 

He looked inquiringly at his sister as she came up, 
and she looked in the same way at Polwarth. 

“ I feel as if I had been lying all alone in this wide 
field,” said Leopold, “and as if Emmeline had been by 
me, though I didn’t see her.” 

Polwarth looked after the two retiring forms, which 
were now almost at the end of the meadow, and about 
to issue on the high road. 

Helen followed his look with hers. A sense of dan- 


582 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


across the fields. Following this she came to a stile, and 
being rather weary with her long walk, sat down on it. 

The day was a grand autumnal one. But nature had 
no charms for her. Indeed had she not been close 
shut in the gloomy chamber of her own thoughts, she 
would not thus have walked abroad alone ; for nature 
was to her a dull, featureless void ; while her past was 
scarcely of the sort to invite retrospection, and her 
future was clouded. 

It so fell that just then Leopold was asleep in his 
chair, — evory morning he slept a little soon after being 
carried out, — and that chair was in its usual place in the 
meadow, with the clump of trees between it and the 
stile. Wingfold was seated in the shade of the trees, 
but Helen, happening to want something for her work, 
went to him and committed her brother to his care un- 
til she should return, whereupon he took her place. 
Almost the same moment, however, he spied Polwarth 
coming from the little door in the fence, and went to 
meet him. When he turned, he saw, to his surprise, a 
lady standing beside the sleeping youth, and gazing at 
him with a strange intentness. Polwarth had seen her 
come from the clump of trees, and supposed her a 
friend. The curate walked hastily back, fearing he 
might wake and be startled at sight of th^ stranger. 
So intent was the gazing lady, that he was within a few 
yards of her before she heard him. She started, gave one 
glance at the curate, and hurried away towards the town. 
There was an agitation in her movements that Wing- 
fold did not like ; a suspicion crossed his mind, and he 


THE BLOOD-HOUND. 


583 


resolved to follow her. In his turn he made over his 
charge to Polwarth, and set off after the lady. 

The moment the eyes of Emmeline’s mother fell 
upon the countenance of Leopold, whom, notwith- 
standing the change that suffering had caused, she 
recognized at once, partly by the peculiarity of his com- 
plexion, the suspicion, almost conviction, awoke in her 
that here was the murderer of her daughter. That he 
looked so ill seemed c»nly to confirm the likelihood. 
Her first idea was to wake him and see the effect of 
her sudden presence. Finding he was attended, how- 
ever, she hurried away to inquire in the town and dis- 
cover all she could about him. 

A few moments after, Polwarth had taken charge of 
him, and while he stood looking on him tenderly, the 
youth woke with a start. 

“ Where is Helen he said. 

“ I have not seen her. Ah, here she comes !” 

“ Did you find me all alone, then ?” 

“Mr. Wingfold was with you. He gave you up to 
me, because he had to go into the town.” 

He looked inquiringly at his sister as she came up, 
and she looked in the same way at Polwarth. 

“ I feel as if I had been lying all alone in this wide 
field,” said Leopold, “ and as if Emmeline had been by 
me, though I didn’t see her.” 

Polwarth looked after the two retiring forms, which 
were now almost at the end of the meadow, and about 
to issue on the high road. 

Helen followed his look with hers. A sense of dan- 


584 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ger seized her. She trembled and kept behind Leo- 
pold’s chair. 

“ Have you been coughing much to-day.^” asked the 
gate-keeper. 

“ Yes, a good deal — before I came out. But it does 
not seem to do much good.” 

“ What good would you have it do 

“ I mean, it doesn’t do much to get it over. O Mr. 
Polwarth, I am so tired !” 

“ Poor fellow ! I suppose it looks to you as if it 
would never be over. But all the millions of the dead 
have got through it before you. I don’t know that 
that makes much difference to the one who is going 
through it. And yet it is a sort of company. Only, 
the Lord of Life is with you, and that is real company, 
even in dying, when no one else can be with you.” 

“ If I could only feel he was with me !” 

“You may feel his presence without knowing what 
it is.” 

“ I hope it isn’t wrong to wish it over, Mr. Pol- 
warth .^” 

“ I don’t think it is wrong to wish any thing you can 
talk to him about and submit to his will. St. Paul 
says, ‘ In every thing let your requests be made known 
unto God.’” 

“ I sometimes feel as if I would not ask him for any-, 
thing, but just let him give me what he likes.” 

“ We must not want to be better than is required of 
us, for that is at once to grow worse.” 

“ I don’t quite understand you.” 


THE BLOOD-HOUND. 


585 


“ Not to ask may seem to you a more submissive way, 
but I don’t think it is so childlike. It seems to me far 
better to say, ‘ O Lord, I should like this or that, but I 
would rather not have it if thou dost not like it also.' 
Such prayer brings us into conscious and immediate 
relations with God. Remember, our thoughts are then 
passing to him, sent by our will into his mind. Our 
Lord taught us to pray always and not get tired of 
it. God, however poor creatures we may be, would 
have us talk to him, for then he can speak to us better 
than when we turn no face to him.” 

“ I wonder what I shall do the first thing when I find 
myself out — out, I mean, in the air, you know.” 

“ It does seem strange we should know so little of 
what is in some sense so near us ! that such a thin 
veil should be so impenetrable ! I fancy the first thing 
I should do would be to pray.” 

“ Then you think we shall pray there — wherever it 
is?” 

“ It seems to me as if I should go up in prayer the 
moment I got out of this dungeon of a body. I am 
wrong to call it a dungeon, for it lies open to God’s fait 
world, and the loveliness of the earth comes into me 
through eyes and ears just as well as into you. Still it 
is a pleasant thought that it will drop off me some day. 
But for prayer— I think all will pray there more than 
here — in their hearts and souls, I mean.” 

“ Then where would be the harm if you were to pray 
for me after I am gone ?” 

“ Nowhere that I know. It were indeed a strange 


586 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


thing if I might pray for you up to the moment when 
you ceased to breathe, and therewith an iron gate 
closed between us, and I could not even reach you 
through the ear of the Father of us both ! It is a 
faithless doctrine, for it supposes either that those 
parted from us can do without prayer, the thing Jesus 
himself could not do without, seeing it was his highest 
joy, or that God has so parted those who are in him 
from these who are not in him, that there is no longer 
any relation, even with God, common to them. The 
thing to me takes the form of an absurdity.” 

“ Ah, then, pray for me when I am dying, and don’t 
be careful to stop when you think I am gone, Mr. Pol- 
warth.” 

“ I will remember,” said the little man. 

And now Helen had recovered herself and came and 
took her usual seat by her brother’s side. She cast an 
anxious glance now and then into Polwarth’s face, but 
dared not ask him anything. 


CHAPTER LXXXVIII. 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 

MMELINE’S mother had not gone far before 
she became aware that she was followed. It 
was a turning of the tables which she did 
not relish. As would not have been unnat- 
ural, even had she been at peace with all the world, a 
certain feeling of undefined terror came upon her and 
threatened to overmaster her. It was the more 
oppressive that she did not choose to turn and face her 
pursuer, feeling that to do so would be to confess con- 
sciousness of cause. The fate of her daughter, seldom 
absent from her thoughts, now rose before her in asso- 
;iation with herself, and was gradually swelling uneasi- 
ness into terror: who could tell but this man pressing 
on her heels in the solitary meadow, and not the poor 
youth who lay dying there in the chair, and who might 
indeed be only another of his victims, was the murder- 
er of Emmeline ! Unconsciously she accelerated her 



588 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


pace until it was almost a run, but did not thereby 
widen, by a single yard, the distance between her ano 
the curate. 

When she came out on the high road, she gave 
glance in each direction, and, avoiding the country, 
made for the houses. A short lane led her into Pine 
street. There she felt safe, the more that it was 
market-day and a good many people about, and slack- 
ened her pace, feeling confident that her pursuer, who- 
ever he was, would now turn aside. But she was disap- 
pointed, for, casting a glance over her shoulder, she 
saw that he still kept the same distance behind her. 
She saw also, in that single look, that he was well 
known, for several were saluting him at once. What 
could it mean ? It must be the G. B. of the Temple ! 
Should she stop and challenge his pursuit.^ The ob- 
stacle to this was a certain sinking at the heart 
accounted for by an old memory. She must elude him 
instead. But she did not know a single person in the 
place, or one house where she could seek refuge. 
There was an hotel before her ! But, unattended, heat- 
ed, disordered, to all appearance disreputable, what ac- 
count could she give of herself.^ That she had been 
followed by some one everybody knew, and to whom 
everybody would listen ! Feebly debating thus with 
herself, she hurried along the pavement of Pine Street, 
with the Abbey church before her. 

The footsteps behind her grew louder and quicker ; 
the man had made up his mind and was coming up with 
her ! He might be mad, or ready to run ail risks ! 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 


589 


Probably he knew his life at stake through her perse- 
verance and determination. 

On came the footsteps, for the curate had indeed 
made up his mind to speak to her, and either remove 
or certify his apprehensions. Nearer yet and nearer 
they came. Her courage and strength were giving 
way together, and she should be at his mercy She 
darted into a shop, sank on a chair by the counter, and 
begged for a glass of water. A young woman ran to 
fetch it, while Mr. Drew went up stairs for a glass of 
wine. Returning with it he came from behind the 
counter, and approached the lady where she sat leaning 
her head upon it. 

Meantime the curate also had entered the shop, and 
placed himself where he might, unseen by her, await 
her departure, for he could not speak to her there. He 
had her full in sight when Mr. Drew went up to her. 

“ Do me the favor, madam,” he said — but said no 
more. For at the sound of his voice, the lady gave a 
violent start, and raising her head looked at him. The 
wine-glass dropped from his hand. She gave a half- 
choked cry, and sped from the shop. 

The curate was on the spring after her when he was 
arrested by the look of the draper: he stood fixed 
where she had left him, white and trembling as if he 
had seen a ghost. He went up to him, and said in a 
whisper : 

“Who is she?” 

“ Mrs. Drew,” answered the draper, and the curate 
was after her like a greyhound. 


590 


THOMAS VVINGFOLD, CURATE. 


A little crowd of the shop-people gathered in conster- 
nation about their master. 

“ Pick up those pieces of glass, and call Jacob to 
wipe the floor,” he said — then walked to the door, and 
stood staring after the curate as he all but ran to over- 
take the swiftly gliding figure. 

The woman, ignorant that her pursuer was again 
upon her track, and hardly any longer knowing what 
she did, hurried blindly towards the churchyard. Pres- 
ently the curate relaxed his speed, hoping she would 
enter it, when he would have her in a fit place for the 
interview upon which he was, if possible, more deter- 
mined than ever, now that he had gained so unexpected- 
ly such an absolute hold of her. “ She must be Emme- 
line’s mother,” he said to himself," — fit mother for 
such a daughter.” The moment he caught sight of the 
visage lifted from its regard of the sleeping youth, he 
had suspected the fact. He had not had time to ana- 
lyze its expression but there was something dreadful in 
it. A bold question would determine the suspicion. 

She entered the churchyard, saw the Abbey door 
open and hastened to it. She was in a state of bewil- 
derment and terror that would have crazed a weaker 
woman. In the porch she cast a glance behind her: 
there again was her pursuer ! She sprang into the 
church. A woman was dusting a pew not far from the 
door. 

" Who is that coming ?” she asked, in a tone and 
with a mien that appalled Mrs. Jenkins. She had but 
to stretch her neck a little to see through the porch. 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 


591 


“ Why it be only the parson, ma’am !” she answered. 

“ Then I shall hide myself, over there, and you must 
tell him I went out by that other door. Here's a sove- 
reign for you.” 

“ I thank you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Jenkins looking 
wistfully at the sovereign, which was a great sum of 
money to a sexton’s wife with children ; then instantly 
going on with her dusting ; “ but it ain’t no use tryin’ 
of tricks with our parson. He ain’t one of your Mol- 
lies. A man as don’t play no tricks with hisself, as I 
heerd a gentleman say, it ain’t no use tryin’ no tricks 
with him." 

Almost while she spoke the curate entered. The 
suppliant drew herself up and endeavored to look both 
dignified and injured. 

“ Would you oblige me by walking this way for a mo- 
ment he said, coming straight to her. 

Without a word she followed him a long way up the 
church, to the stone screen which divided the chancel 
from the nave. There in sight of Mrs. Jenkins, but so 
far off that she could not hear a word said, he asked her 
to take a seat on the steps that led up to the door, in 
the centre of the screen. Again she obeyed, and Wing- 
fold sat down near her. 

“Are you Emmeline’s mother,^” he said. 

The gasp, the expression of eye and cheek, the whole 
startled response of the woman, revealed that he had 
struck the truth. But she made no answer. 

“ You had better be open with me,” he said, “ for I 
mean to be very open with you.” 


592 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


She stared at him, but either could not, or would not 
speak. Probably it was caution, she must hear more. 

The curate was already excited, and I fear now got a 
little angry, for the woman was not pleasant to his eyes. 

“ I want to tell you,” he said “ that the poor youth 
whom your daughter’s behavior made a murderer 
of—” 

“ She gave a cry, and turned like ashes. The curate 
was ashamed of himself. 

“ It sounds cruel,” he said, “ but it is the truth. I say 
he is now dying— will be gone after her in a few weeks. 
The same blow killed both, only one has taken longer 
to die. No end can be served by bringing him to jus- 
tice. Indeed if he were arrested, he would but die on 
the way to prison. I have followed you to persuade you, 
if I can, to leave him to his fate and not urge it on. If 
ever man was sorry, or suffered for his crime—” 

“ And pray what is that to me, sir.?” cried the aveng- 
ing mother, who, finding herself entreated, straightway 
became arrogant. “Will it give me back my child.? 
The villain took her precious life without giving her a 
moment to prepare for eternity, and you ask me— her 
mother— to let him go free ! I will not. I have vowed 
vengeance, and I will have it.” 

“ Allow me to say that if you die in that spirit, you 
will be far worse prepared for eternity than I trust your 
poor daughter was.” 

“ What is that to you .? If T choose to run the risk, 
it is my business. I tell you it shall not be my fault if 
the wretch is not brought to the gallows.” 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 


593 


“ But he cannot live to reach it. The necessary pre- 
liminaries would waste all that is left of his life. I only 
ask of you to let him die in what peace is possible to 
him. We must forgive our enemies, you know. But 
indeed he is no enemy of yours.” 

“No enemy of mine ! The man who murdered my 
child no enemy of mine ! I am his enemy then, and 
that he shall find. If I cannot bring him to the gallows, 
I can at least make every man and woman in the coun- 
try point the finger of scorn and hatred at him. I can 
bring him and all his to disgrace and ruin. Their pride 
indeed ! They were far too grand to visit me, but not 
to send a murderer into my family. I am in my rights, 
and I will have justice. We shall see if they are too 
grand to have a nephew hung ! My poor lovely inno- 
cent ! I will have justice on the foul villain. Cringing 
shall not turn me.” 

Her lips were white and her teeth set. She rose with 
the slow movement of one whose intent, if it had blos- 
somed into passion, was yet rooted in determination, 
and turned to leave the church. 

“ It might hamper your proceedings a little,” said 
Wingfold, “ if in the meantime a charge of bigamy were 
brought against yourself, Mrs. Drew !” 

Her back was towards the curate, and for a moment 
she stood like another pillar of salt. Then she began to 
tremble and laid hold of the carved top of a bench. 
But her strength failed her completely ; she sank on her 
knees and fell on the floor with a deep moan. 

The curate called Mrs. Jenkins and sent her for 


594 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


water. With some difficulty they brought her to her- 
self. 

She rose, shuddered, drew her shawl about her, and 
said to the woman, 

“I am sorry to give so much trouble. When does 
the next train start for London 

“ Within an hour,” answered the curate. “ I will see 
you safe to it.” 

“ Excuse me ; I prefer going alone.” 

“ That I can not permit.” 

“ I must go to my lodgings first.” 

“ I will go with you.” 

She cast on him a look of questioning hate, yielded, 
and laid two fingers on his offered arm. 

They walked out of the church together and to the 
cottage where, for privacy, she had lodged. There he 
left her for half an hour, and, yielding to her own ne- 
cessities and not his entreaties, she took some re- 
freshment. In the glowing sullenness of foiled re- 
venge, the smoke of which was crossed every now and 
then by a flash of hate, she sat until he returned. 

“ Before 1 go with you to the train,” said the curate, 
re-entering, “ you must give me your word to leave 
young Lingard unmolested. I know my friend Mr. 
Drew has no desire to trouble you, but I am equally 
confident that he will do whatever I ask him. If you 
will not promise me, from the moment you get into 
the train you shall be watched. — Do you promise 

She was silent, with cold gleaming eyes, for a time, 
then said, 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 


595 


“ How am I to know that this is not a trick to save 
his life ?” 

“ You saw him ; you could see he is dying. I tell you 
I do not think he can live a month. His disease is 
making rapid progress. He must go with the first of 
the cold weather.” 

She could not help believing him. 

“ I promise,” she said. “ But you are cruel to compel 
a mother to forgive the villain that stabbed her daugh- 
ter to the heart.” 

“ If the poor lad were not dying I should see that he 
gave himself up, as indeed he set out to do some weeks 
ago, but was frustrated by his friends. He is dying for 
love of her. 1 believe I say so with truth. Pity and love 
and remorse and horror of his deed have brought him 
to the state you saw him in. To be honest with you, he 
might have got better enough to be tortured for a 
while in a madhouse, for no jury would have brought 
him in anything but insane at the time, with the evi- 
dence that would have been adduced ; but in his anxie- 
ty to see me one day — for his friends at that time did 
not favor my visits, because I encouragecj him to sur- 
render — he got out of the house alone to come to me, 
but fainted in the .churchyard, and lay on the damp 
earth for the better part of an hour, I fancy, before we 
found him. Still, had it not been for his state of mind, 
he might have got over that, too. — As you hope to be 
forgiven, you must forgive him.” 

He held out his hand to her. She was a little soft- 
ened, and gave him hers. 


596 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Allow me one word more,” said the curate, “ and . 
then we shall go : Our crimes are friends that will hunt 
us either to the bosom of God, or the pit of hell.” 

She looked down,* but her look was still sullen and 
proud. 

The curate rose, took up her bag, went with her to 
•the station, got her ticket, and saw her off. 

Then he hastened back to Drew and told him the 
whole story. 

“ Poor woman !” said her husband. “ But God only 
knows how much / am to blame for all this. If I had 
behaved better to her she might have never left me, 
and your poor young friend would now be well and 
happy.” 

“ Perhaps consuming his soul to a cinder with that 
odious drug,” said Wingfold. “ Tis true, as Edgar in 
King Lear says : 

“ The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us ; 

but he takes our sins on himself, and while he drives 
them out of us with a whip of scorpions, he will yet 
make them work his ends. He defeats our sins, makes 
them prisoners, forces them into the service of good, 
chains them like galley-slaves to the rowing-benches 
of the gospel-ship, or sets them like ugly gurgoyles or 
corbels or brackets in the walls of his temples. No, 
that last figure I retract. 1 don’t like it. It implies 
their continuance.” 

“ Poor woman !” said Mr. Drew again, who for once 


THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED. 


597 


had been inattentive to the curate. “ Well ! she is 
sorely punished, too.” 

“ She will be worse punished yet,” said the curate, 
“ if I can read the signs of character. She is not re- 
pentant yet — though I did spy in her just once a touch 
of softening.” 

“ It is an awful retribution,” said the draper, “ and I 
may yet have to bear my share — God help me !” 

“ I suspect it is the weight of her own crime that 
makes her so fierce to avenge her daughter. I doubt if 
anything makes one so unforgiving as guilt unrepented 
of.” 

“ Well, I must try to find out where she is, and keep 
an eye upon her.” 

“ That will be easy enough. But why 

“ Because, if, as you think, there is more evil in store 
for her, I may yet have it in my power to do her some 
service. I wonder if Mr. Polwarth would call that 
divine service” he added with one of his sunny smiles. 

“ Indeed he would,” answered the curate. 


CHAPTER LXXXIX. 


THE BEDSIDE. 

EORGE BASCOMBE, when he went to Paris, 
had no thought of deserting Helen. He had 
good ground for fearing that-it might be ruin- 
ous both to Lingard and himself to under- 
take his defence. From Paris he wrote often to Helen, 
and she replied — not so often, yet often enough to sat- 
isfy him ; and as soon as she was convinced that Leo- 
pold could not recover, she let him know, whereupon 
he instantly began his preparations for returning. 

Before he came, the weather had changed once more. 
It was now cold, and the cold had begun at once to tell 
upon the invalid. There are some natures to which 
cold, moral, spiritual, or physical, is lethal, and Lin- 
gard’s was of this class. When the dying leaves began 
to shiver in the breath of the coming winter, the very 
brightness of the sun to look gleamy, and nature to put 
on the unfriendly aspect of a world not made for living 
in, but for shutting out — when all things took the turn 
of reminding man that his life lay not in them, Leopold 



THE BEDSIDE. 


599 


began to shrink and withdraw. He could not face the 
ghastly persistence of the winter, which would come 
let all the souls of the summer-nations shrink and pro- 
test as they might : let them creep shivering to Hades ; 
he would have his day. 

His sufferings were, now considerable, but he never 
complained. Restless and fevered and sick at heart, it 
was yet more from the necessity of a lovely nature than 
from any virtue of will that he was so easy to nurse, 
accepting so readily all ministrations. Never exacting 
and never refusing, he was always gently grateful, giv- 
ing a sort of impression that he could have been far more 
thankful had he not known the object of the kindness- 
es so unworthy. Next to Wingfold's and his sister’s, 
the face he always welcomed most was that of the gate- 
keeper — indeed I ought hadly to say next to theirs ; for 
the curate was to him as a brother, Polwarth was like 
a father in Christ. He came every day, and every day, 
almost till that of his departure, Leopold had some- 
thing to ask him about or something to tell him. 

“ I am getting so stupid, Mr. Polwarth !” he said 
once. “ It troubles me much. I don’t seem to care for 
anything now. I don’t want to hear the New Testa- 
ment ; I would rather hear a child’s story — something 
that did not want thinking about. If I am not cough- 
ing, I am content. I could lie for hours and hours and 
never think more than what goes creeping through my 
mind no faster than a canal in Holland. When I am 
coughing, — I don't think about anything then either — 
only long for the fit to be over and let me back again 


6oo 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


into Sleepy Hollow. All my past life seems to be gone 
from me. I don’t care about it. Even my crime looks 
like something done ages ago. I know it is mine, and 
I would father it were not mine, but it is as if a great 
cloud had come and swept away the world in which it 
took place. I am afraid sometimes that I am beginning 
not to care even about that. I say to myself, I shall be 
sorry again by and by, but I can’t think about it now. I 
feel as if I had handed it over to God to lay down where 
I should find it again when I was able to think and be 
sorry.” 

This was a long utterance for him to make, but he 
had spoken slowly and with frequent pauses. Pol- 
warth did not speak once, feeling that a dying man must 
be allowed to ease his mind after his own fashion, and 
take as much time to it as he pleased. Helen and 
Wingfold both would have told him he must not 
tire himself, but that Polwarth never did. The dying 
should not have their utterances checked, or the feel- 
ing of not having finished forced upon them. They 
will always have plenty of the feeling without that. 

A fit of coughing compelled him to break off, and 
when it was over, he lay panting and weary, but with 
his large eyes questioning the face of Polwaith. Then 
the little man spoke. 

“ He must give us every sort of opportunity for 
trusting him,” he said. “The one he now gives you, is 
this dullness that has come over you. Trust him 
through it, submitting to it and yet trusting against it, 
and you get the good of it. In your present state per- 


THE BEDSIDE. 


6oi 


haps you can not even try to bring about by force of 
will any better state of feeling or higher intellectual 
condition ; but you can say to God something like 
this : ‘ See, Lord, I am dull and stupid, and care for 
nothing : take thou care of everything for me, heart, and 
mind and all. I leave all to thee. Wilt thou not at 
length draw me out of this my frozen wintery state ? 
Let me not shrink from fresh life and thought and 
duty, or be unready to come out of the shell of my 
sickness when thou sendest for me. 1 wait thy will. I 
wait even the light that I feel now as if I dared noi en- 
counter for weariness of body and faintness of spirit.' ’* 
“Ah!” cried Leopold, “there you have touched it! 
How can you know so well what I feel 
“ Because I have often had to fight hard to keep 
death to his own province and not let him cross over 
into my spirit.” 

“ Alas ! I am not fighting at all ; I am only letting 
things go.” 

' “You are fighting more than you know, I suspect, 
for you are enduring, and that patiently. Suppose 
Jesus were to knock at the door now, and it was 
locked ; suppose you knew it was he, and there was no 
one in the room to open it for him ; suppose you were 
as weak as you are now, and seemed to care as little 
about him or anything else : what would you do ?” 

Leopold looked half amazed, as if wondering what his 
friend could be driving at with such a question. 

“ What else could I do but get up and open it ?” he 
said. 


6o2 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Would you not be tempted to lie still and wait till 
some one came ?” 

No.” 

“ Would you not say in your heart, ‘The Lord knows 
I am very weak, and I should catch cold, and the exer- 
tion would make me cough dreadfully, and he won’t 
mind if I lie still ?’ ” 

“That I wouldn’t ! What should I care what came 
to me ? What would it matter so long as I got one 
look at him ! Besides, if he didn’t want me to get up, 
he wouldn’t knock.” 

“ But suppose you knew that the moment you turned 
the key you would drop down, and when the Lord 
came in you would not see him.” 

“ I can’t think where you want to take me, Mr. Pol- 
warth !” said the youth. “ Even if I knew I should 
drop dead the moment I got on the floor, what would 
it matter ! I should get to him the sooner then, and 
tell him why 1 didn’t open the door. Can you suppose 
for a moment I should let any care for this miserable 
body of mine come between my eyes and the face of 
my Lord ?” 

“You see then that you do care about him a little, 
though a minute ago you didn’t think it ! There are 
many feelings in us that are not able to get up stairs 
the moment we call them. Be as dull and stupid as it 
pleases God to let you be, and trouble neither yourself 
nor him about that, only ask him to be with you all the 
same.” 


THE BEDSIDE. 


603 


The little man dropped on his knees by the bedside, 
and said, 

“ O Lord Jesus, be near when it seems to us, as it 
seemed to thee once, that our Father has forsaken us, 
and gathered back to himself all the gifts he once gave 
us. Even thou who wast mighty in death, didst need 
the presence of thy Father to make thee able to 
endure : forget not us, the work of thy hands, yea, the 
labor of thy heart and spirit. Oh remember that we are 
his offspring, neither accountable for our own being, 
nor able to comfort or strengthen ourselves. If thou 
wert to leave us alone, we should cry out upon thee as 
on the mother who threw her babes to the wolves— and 
there are no wolves able to terrify thee. Ah Lord ! we 
know thou leavest us not, only in our weakness we would 
comfort our hearts with the music of the words of faith. 
Thou canst not do other than care for us, Lord Christ, 
for whether we be glad or sorry, slow of heart or full 
of faith, all the same are we the children of thy Father. 
He sent us here, and never asked us if we would ; 
therefore thou must be with us, and give us repentance 
and humility and love and faith, that we may indeed be 
the children of thy Father who is in heaven. Amen.” 

While Polwarth was yet praying, the door had open- 
ed gently behind him, and Helen, not knowing that 
he was there, had entered with Bascombe. He neither 
heard their entrance, nor saw the face of disgust that 
George made behind his back. What was in Bas- 
combe’s deepest soul who shall tell ? Of that region 
he himself knew nothing. It was a silent, holy place 


6o4 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


into which he had never yet entered — therefore lonely 
and deserted as the top of Sinai after the cloud had 
departed. No — I will not say that : who knows what is 
where man can not or will not look ? If George had 
sought there, perhaps he might have found traces of a 
presence not yet altogether vanished. In what he 
called and imagined his deepest soul, however, all he 
was now conscious of was a perfect loathing of the 
monstrous superstition so fitly embodied before him. 
The prayer of the kneeling absurdity was to him an 
audacious mockery of the infrangible laws of Nature : 
this hulk of misshapen pottery actually presuming to 
believe that an invisible individual heard what he said 
because he crooked his hinges to say it ! It did not 
occur to George that the infrangible laws of Nature she 
had herself from the very first sc agonizingly broken to 
the poor dwarf, she had been to him such a cruel step- 
mother, that he was in evil case indeed if he could find 
no father to give him fair play and a chance of the 
endurable. Was he so much to blame if he felt the 
annihilation offered by such theorists as George, not alto- 
gether a satisfactory counterpoise either to existence 
or its loss ? If, even, he were to fancy in his trouble 
that the old fable of an elder brother, something more 
humble than grand, handsome George Bascombe, and 
more ready to help his little brothers and sisters, might 
be true, seeing that an old story is not necessarily a 
false one, and were to try after the hints it gave, surely 
in his condition such folly, however absurd to a man of 
George Bascombe’s endowments, might of the more 


THE BEDSIDE. 


605 


gifted ephemeros be pardoned if not pitied. Nor will I 
assert that he was altogether unaware of any admixture 
of the sad with the ludicrous when he saw the amor- 
phous agglomerate of human shreds and patches kneel- 
ing by the bedside of the dying murderer, to pray some 
comfort into his passing soul. But his “gorge rose at 
the nonsense and stuff of it,” while through Helen ran a 
cold shudder of disgust at the familiarity and irreve- 
rence of the little spiritual prig. How many of the judg- 
ments we are told not to judge and yet do judge must 
make the angels of the judging and the judged turn and 
look at each other and smile a sad smile, ere they set 
themselves to forget that which so sorely needs to be 
forgotten. 

Polwarth rose from his knees unaware of a hostile 
presence. 

“ Leopold,” he said, taking his hand, “ I would gladly, 
if I might, walk with you through the shadow. But the 
heart of all hearts will be with you. Rest in your tent 
a little while, which is indeed the hollow of the Father’s 
hand turned over you, with your strong brother watch- 
ing the door. Your imagination can not go beyond the 
truth of him who is the Father of lights, or of him who 
is the Elder Brother of men.” 

Leopold answered only with his eyes. Polwarth 
turned to go, and saw the on-lookers. They stood be- 
tween him and the door, but parted and made room for 
him to pass. Neither spoke. He made a bow first to 
one and then to the other, looking up in the face of each, 
unabashed by a smile of scorn or blush of annoyance. 


6o6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


but George took no notice, walking straight to the bed 
the moment the way was clear. Helen’s conscience, 
however, or heart, smote her, and, returning his bow, 
she opened the door for her brother's friend. He 
thanked her, and went his way. 

‘‘ Poor dear fellow !” said George kindly, and stroked 
the thin hand laid in his: “can I do anything for 
you ?” 

“Nothing but be good to Helen when lam gone, 
and tell her now and then that I am not dead, but living 
in the hope of seeing her again one day before long. 
She might forget sometimes — not me, but that, you 
know.” 

“ Yes, yes. I’ll see to it,” answered George, in the evil 
tone of one who faithfully promises a child an impossi- 
bility. Of course there was no more harm in lying to a 
man who was just on the verge of being a man no more, 
and becoming only an unpleasant mass of chemicals, 
which a whole ant-heap of little laws would presently be 
carrying outside the gates of the organic, than there had 
been in lying to him when he supposed him a madman. 
Neither could any one blame him for inconsistency; 
for had he not always said, in the goodness of his heart, 
that he would never disturb the faith of old people 
drawing nigh their end, because such no more pos- 
sessed the needful elasticity of brain to acommodate 
themselves to the subversion of previous modes of 
feeling and thought, unavoidable to the adoption of his 
precious revelation. Precious he did believe it, never 
having himself had one of those visions of infinite 


THE BEDSIDE. 


607 


hope, which, were his theory once proved as true as he 
imagined it, must then indeed vanish forever. 

“ Do you suffer much asked George, 

“ Yes — a good deal ” 

“ Pain ?” 

“ Not so much ; — sometimes. The weakness is the 
worst. But it doesn’t matter; God is with me.” 

“ What good does that do you ?” asked George, for- 
getting himself, half in contempt, half in a curiosity 
which he would have called, and which perhaps was, 
scientific. 

But Leopold took it in good faith, and answered. 

“ It sets it all right, and makes me able to be patient.” 

George laid down the hand he held, and turned sadly 
to Helen, but said nothing. 

The next moment Wingfold entered. Helen kissed 
the dying hand, and left the room with George. 


CHAPTER XC. 


THE GARDEN. 

ENDERLY he led her into the garden, and 
down the walks now bare of bordering flow- 
ers. To Helen it looked like a graveyard ; 
the dry bushes were the memorials of the 
buried flowers, and the cypress and box trees rose like 
the larger monuments of shapely stone. The day was 
a cold leaden one, that would have rained if it could, to 
get rid of the deadness at its heart, but no tears came. 
To the summer-house they went, under the cedar, and 
sat down. Neither spoke for some time. 

“ Poor Leopold !” said George at length, and took 
Helen’s hand. 

She burst into tears, and again for some time neither 
spoke. 

“ George, I can’t bear it !” she said at length. 

“ It is very sad,” answered George. “ But he had a 
happy life, I don’t doubt, up to — to — ” 

“ What does that matter now ? It is all a horrible 



THE GARDEN. 


609 


farce. To begin so fair and lovely, and end so stormy 
and cold and miserable !” 

George did not like to say what he thought, namely, 
that it was Leopold’s own doing. He did not see that 
therein lay the deepest depth of the misery — the thing 
that of all things needed help ; all else might be borne ; 
the less that could be borne the better. 

“ It is horrible,” he said. “ But what can be done ? 
What’s done is done, and nobody can help it.” 

“ There should be somebod}' to help it,” said Helen. 

“ Ah ! Should be !” said George. “ Well, it’s a com- 
fort it will soon be over !” 

“ Is it ?” returned Helen almost sharply. “ But he’s 
not youl brother, and you don’t know what it is to lose 
him ! Oh how desolate the world will be without my 
darling !” 

And again her tears found way. 

“All that I can do to make up for the loss, dearest 
Helen,” said George, — 

“O George !” she cried starting to her feet, “ is there 
no hope } I don’t mean of his getting better— that we 
do know the likelihoods of— but is there no hope of 
sometime seeing him again ? We know so little about 
all of it ! Might there not be some way ? 

But George was too honest in himself, and too true 
to his principles, to pretend anything to Helen. Hers 
was an altogether different case from Leopold’s. Here 
was a young woman full of health, and life and hope, 
with all her joys before her ! Many suns must set be- 
fore her sun would go down, many pale moons look 


6lO THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


lovely in her eyes, ere came those that would mock her 
with withered memories — a whole hortus siccus of pas- 
sion-flowers. Why should he lie to her of a hope be- 
yond the grave } Let the pleasures of the world be the 
dearer to her for the knowledge that they must so soon 
depart ; let love be the sweeter for the mournful 
thought that it is a thing of the summer, and that’when 
the winter comes it shall be no more ! But perhaps 
George forgot one point. I will allow that the insects 
of a day, dying in a moment of delightful fruition, are 
blessed ; but when the delicate Psyche, with her jewel- 
feathered wings, is beat about by a wind full of rain un- 
til she lies draggled in the dirt ; when there are no more 
flowers, or if there be, the joy of her hovering is over, and 
yet death comes but slowly ; when the mourners are go- 
ing about the streets ere even the silver cord is loosed ; 
when the past looks a mockery and the future a blank ; 
— then perhaps, even to the correlatives of the most tri- 
umphant natural selection, it may not merely seem as 
if something were wrong somewhere, but even as if 
there ought to be somebody to set wrong right. If 
Psyche should be so subdued to circumstance as to 
accept without question her supposed fate, then doubly 
woe for Psyche ! 

But if George could not lie, it was not necessay for 
him to speak the truth : silence was enough A moment 
of it was all Helen could endure. She rose hastily, left 
the wintered summer-house, and walked back to the 
sick chamber. George followed a few paces behind, so 
far quenched that he did not overtake her to walk by 


THE GARDEN, 


6l I 


her side, feeling he had no aid to offer her. Doubtless 
he could have told her of help at hand, but it was help 
that must come, that could neither be given nor taken, 
could not come the sooner for any prayer, and indeed 
could not begin to exist until the worst should be 
over : the nearest George came to belief in a saving 
power, was to console himself with the thought that 
Time would do everything for Helen. 


CHAPTER XCI. 


THE DEPARTURE. 

S LEOPOLD slowly departed, he seemed to 
his sister to draw along with him all that was 
precious in her life. She felt herself grow 
dull and indifferent. It was to no purpose 
that she upbraided herself with heartlessness ; seem- 
ingly heartless her bosom remained. It was not that 
her mind was occupied with any thing else than her 
brother, or drew comfort from another source ; her 
feelings appeared to be dying with him who had drawn 
them forth more than any other. The battle was end- 
ing without even the poor pomp and circumstance of 
torn banners and wailful music. 

Leopold said very little during the last few days. 
His fits of coughing were more frequent, and in the 
pauses he had neither strength nor desire to speak. 
When Helen came to his bedside, he would put out his 
hand to her, and she would sit down by him and hold it 
warm in hers. The hand of his sister was the point of 
the planet from which, like his mount of ascension, the 



THE DEPARTURE. 


613 


^ spirit of the youth took its departure ; — when he let 
that go he was gone. But he died asleep, as so many do ; 
and fancied, I presume, that he was waking into his old 
life, when he woke into his new one. 

Wingfold stood on the other side of the bed, with 
Polwarth by him, for so had the departing wished it, 
and although he made no sign, I can not but think he 
reaped some content therefrom. While yet he lingered, 
one of Helen’s listless, straying glances was arrest- 
ed by the countenance of the gate-keeper. It was so 
still and so rapt that she thought he must be seeing 
within the veil, and regarding what things were await- 
ing her brother on the reverse side of the two-sided 
wonder. But it was not so. Polwarth saw no more 
than she did : he was 07ily standing in the presence of 
him who is not the God of the dead but of the living. 
Whatever lay in that Will was the life of whatever 
came of that Will, that is, of every creature, and up to 
that Will, to the face of the Father, he lifted, in his 
prayerful thought, the heart and mind and body of the 
youth now passing through the birth of death. “1 
know not,” he would have said, had he been questioned 
concerning his spiritual attitude, “ how my prayer 
should for another work anything with the perfect 
Giver, but at least I will not leave my friend behind 
when I go into the presence of his Father and my 
Father. And I believe there is something in it I can 
not yet see.” 

Wingfold’s anxiety was all for Helen. He could do 
no more for Leopold, nor did he need more from man. 


6i4 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


As to many of the things that puzzled them most, he 
was on his way to know more ; he would soon be in the 
heart of what seemed likely to remain a long secret to 
him. But there was his sister, about to be left behind 
him without his hopes ; for her were dreary days at 
hand ; and the curate prayed the God of comfort and 
consolation to visit her. 

Mrs. Ramshorn would now and then look in at the 
noiseless door of the chamber of death, but she rightly 
felt her presence was not desired and though ready to 
help did not enter. Neither did George — not from 
heartlessness, but that he judged it better to leave the 
priests of falsehood undisturbed in the exercise of their 
miserable office. What did it matter how many com- 
forting lies were told to a dying man ? What could it 
matter,? There was small danger of their foolish pray- 
ers and superstitious ceremonies evoking a deity from a 
well-ordered, self-evolved, sphericity of interacting law, 
where not a pin-hole of failure afforded space out of 
which he might creep. No more could they deprive 
the poor lad of the bliss of returning into the absolute 
nothingness whence he had crept — to commit a horri- 
ble crime against immortal society, and creep back 
again with a heart full of love and remorse and self- 
abhorrence into the black abyss. Therefore why 
should he not let them tell their lies and utter their silly 
incantations ? Aloof and unharmed he stood, safe on 
the shore, all ready to reach the rescuing hand to 
Helen, the moment she should turn her eyes to him, 
for the help she knew he had to give her. Certainly, 


THE DEPARTURE. 


615 


for her sake, he would rather she were not left unpro- 
tected to such subtle and insinuating influences ; but 
with the power of his mind upon her good sense, he 
had no fear of the result. Not that he expected her to 
submit at once to the wholesome regimen and plain 
diet he must prescribe her : the soft hand of Time must 
first draw together the edges of her heart’s wound. 

But the deadness of Helen’s feelings, the heartless- 
ness because of which she cried out against herself, 
seemed, in a vague way, by herself unacknowledged yet 
felt, if not caused by, yet associated with some subtle 
radiation from the being of George Bascombe. That 
very morning when he came into the breakfast-room 
so quietly that she had not heard him, and, looking up, 
saw him unexpectedly, he seemed for a moment, she 
could not tell why, the dull fountain of all the misera- 
ble feeling — not of loss, but of no loss, which pressed 
her heart flat in her bosom. The next moment she 
accused herself of the grossest injustice, attributing it 
to the sickness of soul which the shadow of death had 
wrought in her ; for was not George the only true 
friend she had ever had ? If she lost him she must be 
lonely indeed ! The feeling lingered notwithstanding, 
and when she thought it dispelled, began to gather 
again immediately. 

At the same time she shrunk from Wingfold as hard 
and unsympathetic. True he had been most kind, even 
tender, to her brother, but to him he had taken a fancy, 
having found in him one whom he could work upon 
and fashion to his own liking : poor Poldie had never 


6i6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


been one of the strongest of men. But to her, whom 
he could not model after his own ideas, who required a 
reason for the thing anyone would have her believe — to 
her he had shown the rough side of his nature, going 
farther than any gentleman ought, even if he was a 
clergyman, in criticising her conduct. He might well 
take example of her cousin George ! What a different 
sort of artillery he had brought to bear upon the out- 
standing fortress of her convictions ! 

So would she say within herself, again and again, in 
different forms, not knowing how little of conviction 
there was in the conclusions she seemed to come to — 
how much of old habit and gratitude on the one hand, 
and pride and resentment upon the other. And there 
still was that feeling ! she could not drive it away. It 
was like trying to disperse a fog with a fan. 

The outside weather, although she was far past heed- 
ing that, was in harmony with her soul’s weather. A 
dull dark gray fog hung from the sky, and without 
much obscuring the earth altogether hid the sun. The 
air was very cold. There was neither joy nor hope 
anywhere. The bushes were leafless and budless, the 
summer gone, the spring not worth hoping for, be- 
cause it also w'ould go: spring after spring came — for 
nothing but to go again ! Things were so empty 
and wretched, that pain and grief, almost fear itself 
would have been welcome. The world around her, yes, 
all her life, all herself, was but the coid dead body of a 
summer-world. And Leopold was going to be buried 
with the summer. His smiles had all gone with the 


THE DEPARTURE. 


617 


flowers. The weeds of his troubles were going also, for 
they would die with him. But he would not know it 
and be glad, any more than she, who was left caring for 
neither summer nor winter, joy nor sorrow, love nor 
hate, the past nor the future. 

Many such thoughts wandered hazily through her 
mind as she now sat holding the hand of him who was 
fast sleeping away from her into death. Her eyes were 
fixed on the window through which he had entered 
that terrible night, but she saw nothing beyond it. 

“ He is gone,” said Polwarth, in a voice that sounded 
unknown to the ears of Helen, and as he spoke he 
kneeled. 

She started up with a cry, and looked in her brother’s 
face. She had never seen any one die, yet she saw that 
he was dead. 


CHAPTER XCII. 


THE SUNSET. 

W the terrible time, terrible for its very 
dulness and insensibility, passed until it 
brought the funeral, Helen could not have 
told. It seemed to her, as she looked back 
upon it, a bare blank, yet was the blank full -of a waste 
weariness of heart. The days were all one, outside and 
inside. Her heart was but a lonely narrow bay to the 
sea of cold immovable fog that filled the world. No 
one tried to help, no one indeed knew her trouble. 
Every one took it for grief at the loss of her brother, 
while to herself it was the oppression of a life that had 
not even the interest of pain. The curate had of course 
called to inquire after her, but had not been invited to 
enter. George had been everywhere with help, but 
had no word to speak. 

The day of the funeral came, in thin fog and dull 
cold. The few friends gathered. The body was borne 
to the Abbey. The curate received it at the gate in the 
name of the church — which takes our children in its 



THE SUNSET. 


619 


arms, and our bodies into its garden — save indeed 
where her gardener is some foolish priest who knows 
not the heart of his mother, and will pick and choose 
among her dead ; — the lovely words of the last-first of 
the apostles, were read ; and earth was given back to 
earth, to mingle with the rest of the stuff the great 
workman works withal. Cold was Helen’s heart, cold 
her body, cold her very being. The earth, the air, the 
mist, the very light was cold. The past was cold, the 
future yet colder. She would have grudged Leopold 
his lonely rest in the grave, but that she had not feel- 
ing enough even for that. Her life seemed withering 
away from her like an autumn flower in the frosts of 
winter ; and she, as if she had been but a flower, did 
not seem to care. What was life worth, when it had not 
strength to desire even its own continuance ? Heart- 
less she returned from the grave, careless of George’s 
mute attentions, not even scornful of her aunt’s shal- 
low wail over the uncertainty of life and all things hu- 
man, — so indifferent to the whole misery, that she 
walked straight up to the room, hers once more, from 
which the body had just been carried, and which, for so 
many many weary weeks, had been the centre of loving 
pain, sometimes agony. Once more she was at peace — 
but what a peace ! 

She took off her cloak and bonnet, laid them on the 
bed, went to the window, sat down, and gazed, hardly 
seeing, out on the cold garden with its sodden earth, its 
leafless shrubs, and perennial trees of darkness and 
mourning. The meadow lay beyond, and there she did 


620 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


see the red cow busily feeding, and was half-angry with 
her. Beyond the meadow stood the trees, with the 
park behind them. And yet further behind lay the 
hollow with the awful house in its bosom, its dismal 
haunted lake, and its ruined garden. But nothing 
moved her. She could have walked over every room 
in that house without a single quaver of the praecordia. 
Poldie was dead, but was it not well } Even if he had 
not been in trouble, what should his death matter.? 
She would die soon herself and for ever : what did that 
or anything else matter ? Might she but keep this dul- 
ness of spirit, and never more wake to weep foolish 
tears over an existence the whole upstanding broad- 
based fact of which was not worth one drop in the riv- 
ers of weeping that had been flowing ever since the joy- 
less birth of this unconceived, ill-fated, unfathered 
world ! To the hour of death belonged jubilation and 
not mourning ; the hour of birth was the hour of sor- 
row. Back to the darkness ! was the cry of a life whose 
very being was an injury, only there was no one to have 
done the injury. 

Thus she sat until she was summoned to dinner — ear- 
ly for the sake of the friends whose home lay at a dis- 
tance. She ate and drank and took her share in the 
talk as matter of course, believing all at the table 
would judge her a heartless creature, and careless of 
what they might think or say. But they judged her more 
kindly and more truly than she judged herself. They 
saw through her eyes the deeps whose upward ducts 
were choked with the frost of an unknown despair. 


THE SUNSET. 


621 


No sooner was she at liberty, than again she sought 
her room, not consciously from love to her brother 
who had died there, but because the deadness of her 
heart chose a fitting loneliness ; and again she seated 
herself at the window. 

The dreary day was drawing to a close, and the night, 
drearier it could not be, was at hand. The gray had 
grown darker, and she sat like one waiting for the night 
like a monster coming to claim its own and swallow her 
up. 

Something — was it an invasion of reviving light } 
caused her to lift her eyes. Away, sideways from her 
window, in the west, the mist had cleared a little — 
somewhere about the sun. Thinner and thinner it 
grew. No sun came forth: he was already down ; but 
a canopy of faint amber grew visible, stretched above 
his tomb. It was the stuff of which sad smiles are 
made, not a thing that belonged to gladness. But only 
he who has lost his sorrow without regaining his joy, can 
tell how near sorrow lieth to joy. Who that has known 
the dull paths of listless no-feeling, would not have his 
sorrow back with all its attendant agonies } 

The pale amber spread, dilute with light, and beneath 
it lay the gray of the fog, and above it the dark blue of 
cloud — not of sky. The soul of it was so still, so re- 
signed, so sad, so forsaken, that she who had thought 
her heart gone from her, suddenly felt its wells were fill- 
ing, and soon they overflowed. She wept. At what } 
A color in the sky ! Was there then a God that knew 
sadness — and was that a banner of grief he hung forth to 


622 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


comfort the sorrowful with sympathy? Or was it but a 
godless color which the heart varnished with its own 
grief? Or if the human heart came from nothing and 
was sad, why might not the aspects of nature come 
from nothing and be sad too — wrought in harmony with 
the unutterable woe of humanity? Then either man is 
the constructive centre of the world, and its meanings 
are but his own face looking back upon him from the 
mirror of his own projected atmosphere, and comfort 
there is none ; or he is not the centre of the world, 
which yet carries in its forms and colors the aspects of 
his mind ; and then, horror of horrors ! is man the 
one conscious point and object of a vast derision — in- 
sentient nature grinning at sentient man ! rose or saf- 
fron his sky, but mocks and makes mows at him ; while 
he himself is the worst mockery of all, being at once 
that which mocks and that which not only is mocked 
but writhes in agony under the mockery. Such as 
Bascombe reply, they find it not so. I answer — For the 
best of reasons, that it is not so. 

Helen’s doubts did not stay her weeping, as doubt 
generally does ; for the sky with its sweet sadness was 
before her, and deep in her heart a lake of tears, which, 
now that it had begun to flow, would not be stayed. 
She knew not why she wept, knew not that it was the 
sympathy of that pale amber of sad resignation which 
brought her relief ; but she wept and wept, until her 
heart began to stir, and her tears came cooler and 
freer. 

“ Oh Poldie ! my own Poldie ! ” she cried at length, 


THE SUNSET. 


623 


and fell upon her knees — not to worship the sky — not to 
pray to Poldie, or even for Poldie— not indeed to pray 
at all, so far as she knew ; yet I doubt if it was merely 
and only from the impulse of the old childish habit of 
saying prayers. 

But in a moment she grew restless. There was no 
Poldie ! She rose and walked about the room. And 
he came back to her soul, her desolate brother, clothed, 
alas ! in the rags and tatters of all the unkind and un- 
just thoughts she had ever had concerning him, and 
wearing on his face the reflection of her worse deeds. 
She had stood between him and the only poor remnant 
of peace, consolation, and hope, that it was possible he 
should have ; and it was through the friends whom she 
had treated with such distance and uncordiality that he 
did receive it. Then out rushed from the chamber of 

y 

her memory the vision of the small dark nervous wild- 
looking Indian boy, who gazed at her but for one ques- 
tioning moment, then shot into her arms and nestled in 
her bosom. How had she justified that faith } She 
had received, and sheltered, and shielded him, doubt- 
less, and would have done so with her life, yet, when 
it came to the test, she had loved herself better than 
him, and would have doomed him to agony rather than 
herself to disgrace. Oh Poldie ! Poldie ! But he 
could not hear ! Never, forevermore, should she uttei 
to him word of sorrow or repentance ! Never beg his 
forgiveness, or let him know that now she knew better, 
and had risen above such weakness and selfishness ! 


624 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


She stopped, and looked sadly from the window. The 
sky was cloudless overhead, and the amber pall was 
fainter and clearer over the tomb of the sun. She 
turned hastily to the bed where lay her cloak and bon- 
net, put them on with trembling hands, and went out 
by that same window into the garden. She could not 
help a shudder as she stood in the dark passage unlock- 
ing the door in the sunk fence, but the next minute she 
was crossing the meadow through the cold frosty twi- 
light air, now clear of its fog, and seeming somehow to 
comfort, uplift, and strengthen her. The red cow was 
still feeding there. She stopped and talked to her a 
little. She seemed one of Poldie’s friends, and Poldie 
had come back to her heart if he might never more to 
her arms, and she was now on her way to one of his 
best friends, whom, as more worthy, he had loved even 
better than her, and whom she had not honored as 
they deserved or as he must have desired. To get near 
them, would be to get nearer to Poldie. At least she 
would be with those whom he had loved, and who, she 
did not doubt, still loved him, believing him still alive. 
She could not go to the curate, but she could go to the 
Polwarths, no one would blame her for that — except, 
indeed, George. But even George should not comfe be- 
tween her and what mere show of communion with Pol- 
die was left her ! She would keep her freedom — would 
rather break with George than lose an atom of her lib- 
erty ! She would be no clay for his hands to mould af- 
ter his pleasure. 


THE SUNSET. 


625 


She opened the door in the fence and entered the 
park seeming to recover strength with every step she 
took towards Poldie’s friends ! It was almost dark 
when she stood at the lodge-door and knocked. 


t 


ti 


CHAPTER XCIII. 

AN HONEST SPY. 

O one answered Helen’s knock. She repeat- 
ed it, and still no answer came. Her heart 
might have failed her, but that she heard 
voices : what if they were talking about Leo- 
pold ? At length, after knocking four or five times, 
she heard the step as of a child coming down a stair ; 
but it passed the door. Clearly no one had heard her. 
She knocked yet again, and immediately it was opened 
by Rachel. The pleasured surprise that shone up in 
her face when she saw who it was that stood without, 
was lovely to see, and Helen, on whose miserable iso- 
lation it came like a sunrise of humanity, took no coun- 
sel with pride, but, in simple gratitude for the voiceless 
yet eloquent welcome, bent down and kissed her. The 
little arms were flung about her neck, and the kiss re- 
turned with such a gentle warmth and restrained sweet- 
ness as would have satisfied the most fastidious in the 
matter of salute — to which class, however, Helen did 
not belong, for she seldom kissed any one. Then 



AN HONEST SPY. 


627 


Rachel took her by the hand, and led her into the 
kitchen, placed a chair for her near the fire, and said, 

“ I am sorry there is no fire in the parlor. The gen- 
tlemen are in my uncle’s room. Oh, Miss Lingard, I do 
wish you could have heard how they havC been talk- 
ing !” 

“ Have they been saying anything about my brother ? ” 
asked Helen. 

“ It’s all about him,” she replied. 

“ May I ask who the gentlemen are said Helen 
doubtfully. 

“ Mr. Wingfold and Mr. Drew. They are often here.” 

“ Is it— do you mean Mr. Drew the draper 

“ Yes. He is one of Mr. Wingfold’s best pupils. He 
brought him to my uncle, and he has come often eyer 
since.” 

“ I never heard that— Mr. Wingfold— took pupils.— I 
am afraid I do not quite understand you.” 

“ I would have said disciples," returned Rachel smil- 
ing ; “ but that has grown to feel such a sacred word— 
as if it belonged only to the Master, that I didn’t like to 
use it. it would say best what I mean though ; for 
there are people in Glaston that are actually mending 
their ways because of Mr. Wingfold’s teaching, and Mr. 
Drew was the first of them. It is long since such a 
thing was heard of in the Abbey. It never was in my 
time.” 

Helen sighed. She wished it had remained possible 
for her also to become one of Mr. Wingfold s pupils, 
but hOw could she now when she had learned that what 


628 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


he had to teach was at best but a lovely phantasm, 
sprung of the seething together of the conscience and 
imagination. George could give account of the whole 
matter : religion invariably excited the imagination and 
weakened the conscience ; — witness the innumerable 
tales concerning Jesus invented in the first of the 
Christian centuries, and about this and that saint in 
those that followed ! Helen’s experience in Leopold’s 
case had certainly been different, but the other fact re- 
mained. Alas, she could not be a pupil of Mr. Wing- 
fold! She could no longer deceive herself with such 
comfort. And yet ! — Coine unto me^ a7td I will give you 
rest. 

“ I do wish I could hear them,” she said. 

V And why not returned Rachel. “ There is not 
one of them would not be glad to see you. I know 
that.” 

“ I am afraid I should hinder their talk. Would they 
speak just as freely as if I were not there Not that I 
know why they shouldn’t,” she added ; “ only the pres- 
ence of any stranger — ” 

“ You are no stranger to Mr. Wingfold or my uncle,” 
said Rachel, “ and I daresay you know Mr. Drew 

“ To tell you the truth. Miss Polwarth, I have not be- 
haved as I should either to your uncle or Mr. Wingfold. 
I know it now that my brother is gone. They were 
so good to him ! I feel now as if I had been possessed 
with an evil spirit. I could not bear them to be more 
to him than I was. Oh, how I should like to hear what 
they are saying ! I feel as \i I should get a glimpse of 


AN HONEST SPY. 


629 


Leopold — almost, if I might. But I couldn’t face them 
altogether. I could not go into the room.” 

Rachel was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she 
said : 

“ I’ll tell you what then : there’s no occasion. Be- 
tween my uncle’s room and mine there’s a little closet, 
where you shall sit and hear every word. Nothing will 
divide you from them but a few thin old boards.” 

“ That would hardly be honorable though — would it ?” 

“ I will answer for it. I shall tell my uncle afterwards. 
There may be cases where the motive makes the 
right or the wrong. It’s not as if you were listening to 
find out secrets. I shall be in the room, and that will 
be a connecting link, you know : they never turn me out. 
Come now. We don’t know what we may be losing.” 

The desire to hear Leopold’s best friends talk about 
him was strong in Helen, but her heart misgave her : 
was it not unbecoming ? She would be in terror of dis- 
covery all the time. In the middle of the stair, she 
drew Rachel back and whispered, 

“ I dare not do it.” 

“ Come on,” said Rachel. “ Hear what I shall say to 
them first. After that you shall do as you please.” 

Evidently so quick was her response, her thoughts 
had been going in the same direction as Helen’s. 

** Thank you fortrusting me,” she added, as Helen 
again followed her. 

Arrived at the top, the one stood trembling, while the 
other went into the room. 

“ Uncle,” said Rachel, ” I have a friend in the house 


630 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


who is very anxious to hear you and our friends speak 
your minds to each other, but for reasons does not 
wish to appear : will you allow my friend to listen with- 
out being seen ?” 

“ Is it your wish, Rachel, or are you only conveying 
the request of another ?” asked her uncle. 

“ It is my wish,” answered Rachel. “ I really desire it 
— if you do not mind.” 

She looked from one to another as she spoke. The 
curate and the draper indicated a full acquiescence. 

“ Do you quite know what you are about, Rachel 
asked Polwarth. 

“ Perfectly, uncle,” she answered. “ There is no rea- 
son why you should not talk as freely as if you were 
talking only to me. I will put my friend in the closet, 
and you need never think that any one is in the house 
but ourselves.” 

“ Then I have no more to say,” returned her uncle 
with a smile. “ Your friend, whoever he or she may be, 
is heartily welcome.” 

Rachel rejoined Helen, who had already drawn nearer 
to the door of the closet, and now seated herself right 
willingly in its shelter, amidst an atmosphere odorous 
of apples and herbs. Already the talk was going on 
just as before. At first each of the talkers did now and 
then remember there was a listener unseen, but found, 
when the conversation came to a close, that he had for 

^ong time forgotten it. 


CHAPTER XCIV. 


WHAT HELEN HEARD. 

LTHOUGH satisfied that, after what Rachel 
had said to the men, there could be no im- 
propriety in her making use of the privilege 
granted her, Helen felt oddly uncomfortable 
at first. But soon the fancy came, that she was listen- 
ing at the door of the other world to catch news of her 
Leopold, and that made her forget herself and put her 
at peace. For some time, however, the conversation 
was absolutely unintelligible to her. She understood 
the words and phrases, and even some of the sentences, 
but as she had no clew to their drift, the effort to under- 
stand was like attempting to realize the span of a rain- 
bow from a foot or two of it appearing now and then in 
different parts and vanishing again at once. It was 
chiefly Polwarth, often Wingfold, and now and then 
Drew that spoke, Rachel contributing only an occasion- 
al word. At length broke something of a dawn over 
the seeming chaos. The words from which the light 
that first reached Helen flowed, were the draper’s. 



632 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ I can’t think, for all that,” he said, " why, if there be 
life beyond the g^rave, and most sincerely I trust there 
is — I don’t see why we should know so little about it. 
Confess now, Mr. Polwarth ! — Mr. Wingfold !” he said 
appealingly, “ — does it not seem strange that, if our 
dearest friends go on living somewhere else, they 
should, the moment they cease to breathe, pass away 
from us utterly — so utterly that from that moment 
neither hint nor trace nor sign of their existence ever 
reaches us Nature, the Bible, God himself says noth- 
ing about how they exist or where they are, or why they 
are so silent — cruelly silent if it be in their power to 
speak, — therefore, they can not ; and here we are left 
not only with aching hearts but wavering faith, not 
knowing whither to turn to escape the stare of the aw- 
ful blank, that seems in the very intensity of its silence 
to shout in our ears that we are but dust and return to 
the dust !” 

The gate-keeper and curate interchanged a pleased 
look of surprise at the draper’s eloquence, but Pol- 
warth instantly took up his answer. 

“ I grant you it would be strange, indeed, if there 
were no good reason for it,” he said. 

“ Then do you say,” asked Wingfold, “ that until we 
see, discover, or devise some good reason for the dark- 
ness that overhangs it, we are at liberty to remain in 
doubt as to whether there be any life within the 
cloud ?” 

“ I would say so,” answered Polwarth, “ were it not 
that we have the story of Jesus, which, if we accept it 


WHAT HELEN HEARD. 


633 


is surely enough to satisfy us both as to the thing 
itself, and as to the existence of a good reason, whether 
we have found one or not, for the mystery that over- 
shadows it.” 

“ Still I presume we are not forbidden to seek such a 
reason,” said the curate. 

The draper was glancing from the one to the other 
with evident anxiety. 

“ Certainly not,” returned the gate-keeper. “ For 
what else is our imagination given us but the disi^overy 
of good reasons that are, or the invention of good rea- 
sons that may perhaps be ?” 

“Can you then imagine any good reason,” said Drew, 
“ why we should be kept in such absolute ignorance of 
every thing that befalls the parted spirit from the mo- 
ment it quits its house with us ?” 

“ I think I know- one,” answered Polwarth. “ I have 
sometimes fancied it might be because no true idea of 
their condition could possibly be grasped by those who 
remain in the tabernacle of the body ; that to know 
their state it is necessary that we also should be 
clothed in our new bodies, which are to. the old as a 
house to a tent. I doubt if we have any words in which 
the new facts could be imparted to our knowledge, the 
facts themselves being beyond the reach of any senses 
whereof we are now in actual possession. I expect to 
find my new body provided with new, I mean senses 
beyond what I now possess : many more may be 
required to bring us into relation with all the facts in 
himself which God may have shadowed forth in proper- 


634 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ties, as we say, of what we call matter ? The spaces alt 
around us, even to those betwixt star and star, may be 
the home of the multitudes of the heavenly host, yet 
seemingly empty to all who have but our provision of 
senses. But I do not care to dwell upon that kind of 
speculation. It belongs to a lower region, upon which 
I grudge to expend interest while the far loftier one 
invites me, where, if I gather not the special barley of 
which 1 am in search, I am sure to come upon the finest 
of wheat. — Well, then, for my reason : There are a 
thousand individual events in the course of every 
man’s life, by which God takes a hold of him — a thou- 
sand breaches by which he would and does enter, little 
as the man may know it ; but there is one universal 
and unchanging grasp he keeps upon the race, yet not 
as the race, for the grasp is upon every solitary single 
individual that has a part in it : that grasp is — death in 
its mystery. To whom can the man who is about to 
die in absolute loneliness and go he can not tell whith- 
er, flee for refuge from the doubts and fears that assail 
him, but to the Father of his being ?” 

“ But,” said Drew, “ I can not see what harm would 
come of letting us know a little — as much at least as 
might serve to assure us that there was more of some- 
thmg on the other side.” 

“Just this,” returned Polwarth, “that, their fears 
allayed, their hopes encouraged from any lower quar- 
ter, men would, as usual, turn away from the fountain 
to the cistern of life, from the ever fresh original crea- 
tive Love to that drawn off and shut in. That there are 


WHAT HELEN HEARD. 


635 


thousands who would forget God if they could but be 
assured of such a tolerable state of things beyond the 
grave as even this wherein we now live, is plainly to be 
anticipated from the fact that the doubts of so many in 
respect of religion concentrate themselves nowadays 
upon the question whether there is any life beyond the 
grave ; a question which, although no doubt nearly 
associated with religion,— as what question worth ask- 
ing is not ? — does not immediately belong to religion 
at all. Satisfy such people, if you can, that they shall 
live, and what have they gained ? A little comfort 
perhaps— but a comfort not from the highest source, 
and possibly gained too soon for their well-being. 
Does it bring them any nearer to God than they were 
before ? Is he filling one cranny more of their hearts 
in consequence ? Their assurance of immortality has 
not come from a knowledge of him, and without him it 
is worse than worthless. Little indeed has been gained, 
and that with the loss of much. The word applies here 
which our Lord in his parable puts in the mouth of 
Abraham : If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neith- 
er will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. 
He does not say they would not believe in a future 
state though one rose from the dead — although most 
likely they would soon persuade themselves that the 
apparition after all was only an illusion — * but that 
they would not be persuaded to repent, though one 
rose from the dead ; and without that, what great mat- 


See Lynch’s admirable sermon on this subject. 


636 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ter whether they believed in a future state or not ? It 
•vould only be the worse for them if they did. No, Mr. 
Drew ! I repeat, it is not a belief in immortality that 
will deliver a man from the woes of humanity, but faith 
in the God of life, the- Father of lights, the God of all 
consolation and comfort. Believing in him, a man can 
leave his friends, and their and his own immortality, 
with everything else — even his and their love and per- 
fection, with utter confidence in his hands. Until we 
have the life in us, we shall never be at peace. The 
living God dwelling in the heart he has made, and glo' 
rifying it by inmost speech with himself — that is life, 
assurance and safety. Nothing less is or can be such.” 


CHAPTER XCV. 


WHAT HELEN HEARD MORE 

WORD you dropped the other day,” said the 
curate, “ set me thinking of the noteworthy 
fact that belief in God and belief in immor^ 
tality cease together. But I do not see the 
logic of it. If we are here without God, why may we 
not go on there without God ? I mar^7el that I have 
heard of no one taking up and advocating the view. 
What a grand discovery it would be for some people — 
that not only was there no God to interfere with them,- 
and insist on their becoming something worth being, 
but that they were immortal notwithstanding ! that 
death was only the passage of another birth into a con- 
dition of enlarged capacity for such bliss as they 
enjoyed here, but more exalted in degree, perhaps in 
kind, and altogether preferable.” 

< “I know one to whom the thought would not have 
been a new one,” said Polwarth. “ Have you not come 
upon a passage in my brother’s manuscript involving 
the very idea?” > , • . 



638 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ Not yet. I read very slowly and pick up all the 
crumbs. I wish we had had the book here. I should 
have so much liked to hear you read from it again.” 

The gate-keeper rose and went to his cabinet. 

“The wish is easily gratified,” he said. “I made a 
copy of it, — partly for security, partly that I might 
thoroughly enter into my brother’s thoughts,” 

“ I wonder almost you lend the original then,” said 
Wingfold. 

“ I certainly could not lend the copy to any man I 
could not trust with the original,” answered Polwarth. 
“ But I never lent either before.” — He was turning over 
the leaves as he spoke. — “The passage,” he went on, 
“ besides for its own worth, is precious to me as show- 
ing how, through all his madness, his thoughts haunted 
the gates of wisdom. — Ah ! here it is ! 

“ ‘ About this time I had ‘another strange vision, 
whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell. 
I thought, as oftener than once before, that at length I 
was dying. And it seemed to me that I did die and 
awake to the consciousness of a blessed freedom from 
the coarser and more ponderous outer dress I had hith.^ 
erto worn, being now clad only in what had been up to 
this time an inner garment, and was a far more closely 
fitting one. The first delight of which I was aware was 
coolness — a coolness that hurt me not — the coolness as 
of a dewy summer eve, in which a soft friendly wind is 
blowing; and the coolness was that of perfect well- 
being, of the health that cometh after fever, when a 
sound sleep hath divided it away and built a rampart 


WHAT HELEN HEARD MORE. 


639 


between ; the coolness of undoubted truth, and of love 
that hath surmounted passion and is tenfold love.’ 

“ He goes on to give further and fuller account of his 
sensations, — ventures even on the anticipated futility of 
an attempt to convey a notion of one of his new senses. 
I leave all that for your own reading, Mr, Wingfold 

“ ‘ But where was I ? That I could not tell. I am 
here was all I could say ; but then what more could I 
ever have said ? — Gradually my sight came to me, or 
the light of the country arose, I could not tell which, 
and behold, 1 was in the midst of a paradise, gorgeous 
yet gracious, to describe which I find no words in the 
halting tongues of earth, and I know something of 
them all, most of them well. If I say a purple sea was 
breaking in light on an emerald shore, the moment the 
words are written, I see them coarse and crude as a 
boy’s first attempt at landscape ; yet are there no better 
wherewith to tell what first filled my eyes with heav- 
enly delight. * * 

“ ‘ The inhabitants were many, but nowhere were 
they crowded. There was room in abundance and wild 
places seemed to be held sacred for solitude.’ 

“ I am only picking up a sentence here and there, as I 
hasten to the particular point,” said Polwarth, looking 
down the page. 

“ ‘ But the flowers ! and the birds ! and above all the 
beauty of the people ! And they dwelt in harmony. 
Yet on their foreheads lay as it seemed a faint mist, or 
as it were the first of a cloud of coming disquiet. 

* * * * * 

“ ‘ And I prayed him, Tell me, sir, whither shall I go 


640 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


to find God and say unto him, Lo, here I am ! And he 
answered and said to me, Sir, I but dimly know what 
thou meanest. Say further. And I stood for an hour, 
even as one astonished. Then said I, All my long life 
on the world whence I came, I did look to find God 

when death should take me. But lo, now And with 

that my heart smote me, for in my former life I had 
oftentimes fallen into unbelief and denied God ; was 
this now my punishment — that I should never find 
him ? And my heart grew cold in my body, and the 
blood curdled therein. Then the man answered and 
said. It is true that in generations past, for so I read in 
our ancient books, men did believe in one above them 
and in them, who had wrought them to that they were, 
and was working them to better still ; but whether it 
be that we have now gained that better, and there is 
nothing higher unto which we may look, therefore no 
need of the high one, I know not, but truly we have 
long ceased so to believe, and have learned that as 
things are, so they have been, and so they shall be. 
Then fell as it were a cold stone into the core of m)'^ 
heart, and I questioned him no farther, for I bore death 
in my heart, even as a woman carrieth her unborn child. 
No God ! I cried, and sped away into a solitude and 
shrieked aloud. No God ! Nay, but ere I believe it, I 
will search through all creation, and cry aloud as I go. 

I will search until I find him, and if I find him not, . 

With that my soul would have fainted in me, had I not 
spread forth my wings and rushed aloft to find him. 

* * • * * ♦ * >1/ 

c *“For the more lovely anything I saw, the more 


WHAT HELEN H-^ARD MORE. 


641 


gracious in color or form, or the more marvellous in 
the law of its working, ever a fresh pang shot to my 
heart : if that which I had heard should prove true, 
then was there no Love such ar seemed to me to dwell 
therein, the soul of its beauty, and all the excellence 
thereof, was but a delusion of :^\y own heart, greedy 
after a phantom-perfection. No God ! no Love ! no 
loveliness, save a ghastly semblarce thereof ! and the 
more ghastly, that it was so like loneliness and yet was 
not to be loved upon peril of pr->rtitution of spirit, 
Then in truth was heaven a fable, and hell an all- 
embracing fact ! For my very being knew in itself that 
if it would dwell in peace, the very atmcrsphere in which 
it lived and moved and breathed must be love, living 
love, a one divine presence, truth to itself,, and love to 
me, and to all them that needed love, down to the 
poorest that can but need it, and knoweth it not when 
it comcth. 1 knew that if love was not all in all, in fact 
as well as in imagination, my life was but a dreary 
hollow made in the shape of a life, and therefore for- 
ever hungry and never to be satisfied. And again I 
spread wings— no longer as it seemed of hope, but 
wings of despair, yet mighty, and flew. And I learned 
thereafter that despair is but the hidden side of hope.' 

“ Here follow pages of his wanderings in quest of God. 
He tells how and where he inquired and sought, 
searching into the near and minute as earnestly as into 
the far and vast, watching at the very pores of being, 
and sitting in the gates of the mighty halls of assembly 
—but all in vain. No God was to be found. 


642 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ ‘ And it seemed to me,’ he says at last, ‘ that, as I 
had been the wanderer of earth, so was I now doomed 
to be the wanderer of heaven. On earth I wandered to 
find death, and men called me the everlasting Jew ; in 
heaven I wandered to find God, and what name would 
they give me now > * * * 

“ ‘ At last my heart sank within me wholly, and I 
folded my wings and through years I also sank and 
sank, and alighted at length upon the place appointed 
for my habitation — that namely wherein I found myself 
first after death. And alighting there, I fell down weary 
and slept. 

“ ‘ And when I awoke I turned upon my side in the 
despair of a life that was neither in my own power nor 
in that of one who was the Father of me, which life 
therefore was an evil thing and a tyrant unto me. And 
io ! there by my side I beheld a lily of the field such as 
grew on the wayside in the old times betwixt Jerusalem 
and Bethany. Never since my death had I seen such, 
and my heart awoke within me, and I wept bitter tears 
that nothing should be true, nothing be that which it 
had seemed in the times of old. And as I wept I heard 
a sound as of the falling of many tears, and I looked, 
and lo a shower as from a watering-pot falling upon the 
lily I And I looked yet again, and I saw the watering- 
pot, and the hand that held it ; and he whose hand held 
the pot stood by me and looked at me as he watered 
the lily. He was a man like the men of the world 
where such lilies grow, .and was poorly dressed, and 
seemed like a gardener. And I looked up in his face. 


WHAT HELEN HEARD MORE. 


643 


and lo — the eyes of the Lord Jesus ! And my heart 
swelled until it filled my whole body and my head, and 
I gave a great cry, and for joy that turned into agony I 
could not rise, neither could I speak, but I crept on my 
hands and my knees to his feet, and there I fell down 
upon my face, and with my hands I lifted one of his 
feet and did place it upon my head, and then I found 
voice to cry, O master ! and therewith the life departed 
from me. And when I came to myself, the master sat 
under the tree, and I lay by his side, and he had lifted 
my head upon his knees. And behold, the world v/as 
jubilant around me, for Love was Love and Lord of all. 
The sea roared, and the fulness thereof was love ; and 
the purple and the gold and the blue and the green 
came straight from the hidden red heart of the Lord 
Jesus. And I closed my eyes for very bliss ; nor had 
I yet bethought me of the time when first those eyes 
looked upon me, for I seemed to have known them 
since first I began to be. But now when for very bliss 
I closed my eyes, my sin came back to me, and 1 
remembered. And I rose up, and kneeled down before 
him, and said, O Lord, I am Ahasuerus, the Jew, the 
man who would not let thee rest thy cross upon the 
stone before my workshop, but drave thee from it. — 
Say no more of that, answered my Lord, for truly I 
have myself rested in thy heart, cross and all, until the 
thing thou diddest in thy ignorance is better than for- 
gotten, for it is remembered in love. Only see thou 
also make right excuse for my brethren who, like thee 
then, know not now what they do. Come and I will 


644 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


bring thee to the woman who died for thee in the 
burning fire. And I said, O Lord leave me not, for 
although I would now in my turn right gladly die for 
her, yet would I not look upon that woman again if the 
love of her would make me love thee one hair the less — 
thou knowest. And the Lord smiled upon me and said. 
Fear not, Ahasuerus ; my love infolds and is the nest of 
all love. I fear not ; fear thou not either. And I arose 
and followed him. And every tree and flower, yea 
every stone and cloud, with the whole earth and sea 
and air, were full of God. even the living God — so that 
now I could have died of pure content. And I followed 
my Lord. * * * * ’ ” 

The gate-keeper was silent, and so were they all. At 
length Rachel rose softly, wiping the tears from her 
eyes, and left the room. But she found no one in the 
closet. Helen was already hastening across the park, 
weeping as she went. 


CHAPTER XCVI. 


THE curate’s resolve. 

HE next day was Sunday. 

Twelve months had not yet elapsed since 
the small events with which my narrative 
opened. The change which had passed, 
not merely upon the opinions, but in the heart and 
mind and very being of the curate, had not then 
begun to appear even to himself, although its roots 
were not only deep in him but deep beyond him, 
even in the source of him ; and now he was in a 
state of mind, a state of being, rather, of whose nature 
at that time he had not, and could not have had, 
the faintest fore-feeling, the most shadowy concep- 
tion. It had been a season of great trouble, but the 
gain had been infinitely greater ; for now’ were the 
bonds of the finite broken, he had burst the shell of the 
mortal, and w’as of those over whom the second death 
hath no power. The agony of the second birth was 
past, and he was a child again — only a child, he knew, 
^but a child of the kingdom ; and the world, and all that 




646 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


God cared about in it, was his, as no miser’s gold could 
ever belong to its hoarder, while the created universe, 
yea and the uncreated also whence it sprung, lay open 
to him in the boundless free-giving of the original 
Thought. “ All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, 
and Christ is God’s he understood the words even as 
he who said them understood them, and as the wise of 
this world never will understand them until first they 
become fools that they may be wise. 

At the same- time a great sorrow threatened him from 
the no less mysterious region of his relations to humani- 
ty ; but if that region and its most inexplicable cares 
.were beyond the rule of the Life that dwelt in him, 
then was that Life no true God, and the whole thing 
was false ; for he loved Helen with a love that was no 
invention or creation of his own, and if not his, then 
whose? Certainly not of one who, when it threatened 
to overwhelm him, was unable to uphold him under it ! 
This thing also belonged to the God of his being. A 
poor God must he be for men or women who did not 
care about the awful things involved in the relation 
between them ! Therefore even in his worst anxieties 
about Helen, — I do not mean in his worst seasons of 
despair at the thought of never gaining her love — he 
had never yet indeed consciously regarded the winning 
of her as a possibility—but at those times when he 
most plainly saw her the submissive disciple of George 
Bascombe, and the two seemed to his fancy to be stray- 
ing away together “ into a wide field, full of dark moun- 
tains when he saw her, so capable of the noblest. 


THE curate’s resolve. 


647 


submitting her mind to the entrance of the poorest, 
meanest, shabbiest theories of life, and taking for her 
guide one who could lead her to no conscious well- 
being, or make provision for sustainment when the 
time of suffering and anxiety should come, or the time 
of health and strength be over when yet she must live 
on ; when he saw her adopting a system of things 
whose influence would shrivel up instead of developing 
her faculties, crush her imagination with such a moun- 
tain weight as was never piled above Titan, and dwarf 
the whole divine woman within her to the size and con- 
dition of an Aztec — even then was he able to reason 
with himself : “ She belongs to God, not to me ; and 
God loves her better than ever I could love her. If she 
should set out with her blind guide, it will be but a first 
day’s journey she will go — through marshy places and 
dry sands, across the far breadth of which lo ! the blue 
mountains that shelter the high vales of sweetness and 
peace.” And with this he not only tried to comfort 
himself, but succeeded — I do not say to contentment, 
but to quiet. Contentment, which, whatever its imme- 
diate shape, to be contentment at all, must be the will 
of God, lay beyond. Alas that men can not believe there 
is such a thing as “ that good and acceptable and perfect 
will of God !” To those that do believe it, it is the 
rejoicing of a conscious deliverance. 

And now this Sunday, Wingfold entered the pulpit, 
prepared at last to utter his resolve. Happily nothing 
had been done to introduce the confusing element of 
another will. The bishop had heard nothing of the 


648 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


matter, and if anything had reached the rector he had 
not spoken. Not one of the congregation, not even 
Mrs. Ramshorn, had hinted to him that he ought to 
resign. It had been left altogether with himself. And 
now he would tell them the decision to which the 
thought he had taken had conducted him. I will give 
a portion of his sermon — enough to show us how he 
showed the congregation the state of his mind in refer- 
ence to the grand question, and the position he took in 
relation to his hearers. 

“ It is time, my hearers,” he said, “ because it is now 
possible to bring to a close that uncertainty with 
regard to the continuance of our relation to each other, 
which I was, in the spring-time of the year, compelled 
by mental circumstance to occasion. I then forced 
myself, for very dread of the honesty of an all-knowing 
God, to break through every convention of the church 
and pulpit, and speak to you of my most private affairs. 
I told you that I was sure of not one of those things 
concerning which it is taken for granted that a clergyman 
must be satisfied ; but that I would not at once yield 
my office, lest in that act I should seem to declare 
unbelief of many a thing which even then I desired to 
find true. In leaving me undisturbed either by com- 
plaint, expostulation, or proffered instruction, you, my 
hearers, have granted me the leisure of which I stood 
in need. Meantime I have endeavored to show you the 
best I saw, while yet I dared not say I was sure of any- 
thing. I have thus kept you, those at least who cared 
to follow my path, acquainted with my mental history.- 


THE curate’s resolve. 


649 


And now I come to tell you the practical result at 
which I have arrived. 

“ But when I say that I will not forsake my curacy, 
still less my right and duty to teach whatever I seem to 
know, I must not therein convey the impression that I 
have attained that conviction and assurance the discov- 
ery of the absence of which was the cause of the whole 
uncertain proceeding. All I now say is, that in the 
story of Jesus I have beheld such grandeur — to me 
•apparently altogether beyond the reach of human 
invention, such a radiation of divine loveliness and 
truth, such hope for man, soaring miles above every 
possible pitfall of Fate ; and have at the same time, from 
the endeavor to obey the word recorded as his, experi- 
enced such a conscious enlargement of mental faculty, 
such a deepening of moral strength, such an enhance- 
ment of ideal, such an increase of faith, hope, and char- 
ity towards all men, that I now declare with the 
consent of my whole man — I cast in my lot with the 
servants of the Crucified ; I am content even to share 
their delusion, if delusion it be, for it is the truth of the 
God of men to me ; I will stand or fall with the story of 
my Lord ; I will take my chance — I speak not in irreve- 
rence but in honesty — my chance of failure or success 
in regard to whatever may follow in this life or the life 
to come, if there be a life to come — on the words and 
will of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom if, impressed as I 
am with the truth of his nature, the absolute devotion 
of his life, and the essential might of his being, I yet 
obey not, I shall not only deserve to perish, but in that 


650 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


very refusal draw ruin upon my head. Before God I 
say it — I would rather be crucified with that man, so it 
might be as a disciple and not as a thief that creeps, in- 
trudes, or climbs into the fold, than I would reign with 
him over such a kingdom of grandeur as would have 
satisfied the imagination and love-ambition of his 
mother. On such grounds as these I hope I am justified 
in declaring myself a disciple of the Son of Man, and in 
devoting my life and the renewed energy and enlarged, 
yea infinite hope which he has given me, to his brothers 
and sisters of my race, that if possible I may gain some 
to be partakers of the blessedness of my hope. Hence- 
forth I am not in holy orders, I reject the phrase in all 
its professional vulgarity, but imder holy orders, even 
the orders of 'Christ Jesus, which is the law of liberty, 
the law whose obedience alone can set a man free from 
in-burrowin^g slavery. 

“ And if any man yet say that, because of my lack of 
absolute assurance, I have no right to the sacred post, 
— Let him, I answer, who has been assailed by such 
doubts as mine, and from the citadel of his faith sees 
no more one lingering shadow of a foe — let him cast at 
me the first stone ! Vain challenge ! for such an one will 
never cast stone at man or woman. But let not him 
whose belief is but the absence of doubt, who has never 
loved enough that which he thinks he believes to have 
felt a single fear lest it should not be true — let not that 
man, I say, cast at me pebble from the brook, or 
cloven rock from the mount of the law, for either will 
fall hurtless at my feet. Friends, I have for the last 


THE curate’s resolve. 


651 


time spoken of myself in this place. Ye have borne 
with me in my trials, and 1 thank you. Those who 
have not only borne but suffered, and do now rejoice 
with me, I thank tenfold. I have done — 

“ Save for one word to the Christians of this congre- 
gation : 

“The waves of infidelity are coming in with a strong 
wind and a flowing tide. Who is to blame.? God it 
can not be, and for unbelievers, they are as they were. 
It is the Christians who are to blame. I do not mean 
those who are called Christians, but those who call and 
count themselves Christians. I tell you, and I speak to 
each one of whom it is true, that you hold and present 
such a withered, starved, miserable, death’s-head idea of 
Christianity; that you are yourself such poverty- 
stricken believers, if believers you are at all ; that the 
notion you present to the world as your ideal, is so 
common-place, so false to the grand, gracious, mighty- 
hearted Jesus — that you are the cause why the truth 
hangs its head in patience, and rides not forth on 
the white horse, conquering and to conquer. You dull 
its lustre in the eyes of men ; you deform its fair pro- 
portions ; you represent not that which it is, but that 
which it is not, yet call yourselves by its name ; you are 
not the salt of the earth, but a salt that has lost its 
savor, for ye seek all things else first, and to that seek- 
ing the kingdom of God and his righteousness shall 
never be added. Until you repent and believe afresh, 
believe in a nobler Christ, namely the Christ revealed 
by himself, and not the muffled form of something 


652 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


vaguely human and certainly not all divine, which the 
false interpretations of men have substituted for him, 
you will be as, I repeat, you are, the main reason why 
faith is so scanty in the earth, and the enemy comes in 
like a flood. For the sake of the progress of the truth, 
and that into nobler minds than yours, it were better 
you joined the ranks of the enemy, and declared what I 
fear with many of you is the fact, that you believe 
not at all. But whether in some sense you believe or 
not, the fact remains, that, while you are not of those 
Christians who obey the word of the master, doing the 
things he says to them, you are of those Christians, if 
you will be called by the name, to whom he will say, / 
never knew yon : go forth into the outer dark7tess. Then, at 
least, will the church be rid of you, and the honest 
doubter will have room to breathe the divine air of the 
presence of Jesus. 

“ But oh what unspeakable bliss of heart and soul and 
mind and sense remains for him who like St. Paul is 
crucified with Christ, who lives no more from his own 
self, but is inspired and informed and possessed with 
the same faith towards the Father in which Jesus lived 
and wrought the will of the Father .’ If the words 
attributed to Jesus are indeed the words of him whom 
Jesus declared himself, then truly is the fate of man- 
kind a glorious one,— and that, first and last, because 
men have a God supremely grand, all- perfect in God- 
head ; for that is, and that alone can be, the absolute 
bliss of the created.” 


CHAPTER XCVII. 


HELEN AWAKE. 

AT Sunday-dinner was a very quiet meal. 
An old friend of Mrs. Ramshorn, a lady- 
ecclesiastic like herself, dined with them, 
what the two may have said to each other in 
secret conclave, I can not tell, but not a word of remark 
upon Mr. Wingfold or his sermon was heard at table. 

As she was leaving the room, Bascombe whispered 
Helen to put on something and come to him in the 
garden. Helen glanced at the window as if doubtful. 
It was cold, but the sun was shining ; the weather had 
nothing to do with it; she had but taken a moment to 
think. She pressed her lips together — and consented. 
George saw she would rather not go, but he set it down 
to a sisterly unwillingness to enjoy herself when her 
brother could no longer behold the sun, and such mere 
sentiment must not be encouraged. 

When the cypresses and box-trees had come betwixt 
them and the house, he offered his arm, but Helen 
preferred being free. She did not refuse to go into the 
summer-house with him ; but she took her place on the 



654 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


opposite side of the little table. George however spied 
no hint of approaching doom. 

“ I am sorry to have to alter my opinion of that 
curate,” he said, as he seated himself. “There was so 
much in him that I took to promise well. But old 
habit, the necessities of existence, and the fear of 
society have been too much for him — as they will al- 
ways be for most men. He has succumbed at last, and 
I am sorry ! I did think he was going to turn out an 
honest man !” 

“And you have come to the certain conclusion that 
he is not an honest man, George V’ 

Assuredly.” 

“Why?” 

. “ Because he goes- on to teach what he confesses he 
is not sure about/’ 

“ He professes to be sure that it is better than any- 
thing he is sure about. — You teach me there is no God ; 
are you absolutely certain there is not ?” 

“Yes; absolutely certain.” 

“ On what grounds ?” 

“ On grounds I have set forth to you twenty 
times, Helen, dear,” answered George a little impatient- 
ly. “ I am not inclined to talk about them now.— I can 
no more believe in a god than in a dragon.” 

‘And yet a dragon was believable to the poets that 
made our old ballads ; and now geology reveals that 
some such creatures did at one time actually exist.” 

“ Ah ! you turn the tables on me there, Helen ! I 
confess my parallel a false one.” 


HELEN AWAKE. 


655 


“ A truer one than you think, perhaps,” said Helen. 
‘That a thing should seem absurd to one man, or to a 
thousand men, will not make it absurd in its own na- 
ture ; and men as good and as clever as you, George, 
have in all ages believed in a God. Only their notion of 
God may have been different from yours. Perhaps 
their notion was a believable one, while yours is not.” 

“ By Jove, Helen ! you’ve got on with your logic. I 
feel quite flattered ! So far as I am aware you have had 
no tutor in that branch but myself! You’ll soon be 
too much for your master, by Jove !” 

Like the pied piper, Helen smiled a little smile. 
But she said seriously, 

“ Well, George, all I have to suggest is — What if, 
after all your inability to believe it, things should at 
last prove, even to your — satisfaction, shall I say ? — that 
tnere A a God ?” 

“ Don’t trouble yourself a bit about it, Helen,” re- 
turned George, whose mind was full of something else, 
to introduce which he was anxiously and heedlessly 
clearing the way ; ” I am prepared to take my chance, 
and all I care about is whether you will take your 
chance with me. Helen, I love you v/ith my whole soul. ‘ 

“ Oh ! you have a soul then, George ? I thought you 
hadn't !” 

“It ^s a foolish form of speech, no doubt,” returned 
Bascombe, a little disconcerted, as was natural. “ But to 
be serious, Helen, I do love you.” 

How long will you love me if I tell you J don’t love 

you 


6s6 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE 


“ Really, Helen, I don’t see how to answer such a 
question. I don’t understand you at all- to-day ! Have 
I offended you ? I am very sorry if I have, but I am 
quite in the dark as to when or where or how.” 

“Tell me then,” said Helen, heedless of his evident 
annoyance and discomfort, “ how long will you love me 
if I love you in return ?” 

“.Forever and ever.” 

“ Another form of speech 

“You know what I mean, well enough. I shall love 
you as long as I live.” 

“ George, I never could love a man who believed I 
was going to die forever.” 

“ But, Helen,’' pleaded Bascombe, “ if it can’t be 
helped, you know !” 

“ But you are content it should be so. You believe it 
willingly. You scoff at any hint of a possible immor- 
tality.” 

“ Well, but, Helen, what difference can it make 
between you and me ?” returned George, whom the dan- 
ger of losing her had rendered for the moment indiffer- 
ent even to his most cherished theory. “ If there 
should be anything afterwards, of course I should go 
on loving you to the very extreme of the possible.” 

“ While now you don’t love me enough to wish I may 
live and not die ! Leaving that out of view, however, 
it makes all the difference to the love I should have to 
expect of you. It may be only a whim — I can prove 
nothing any more than you — but I have a — whim then — • 
to be loved as an immortal woman, the child of a living 


HELEN AWAKE. 


657 


God, and not as a helpless bastard of Nature! I beg 
your pardon —I forget my manners.” 

That a lady should utter such a word ! — and that lady 
Helen ! — George was shocked. Coming on the rest, it 
absolutely bewildered him. He sat silent perforce, 
Helen saw it and yielded to a moment’s annoyance with 
herself, but presently resumed : 

1 have given you the advantage, George, and 
wronged myself. But I don't care mucA. I shall only 
take the better courage to speak my mind. — You come 
asking me to love you, and my brother lying moulder- 
ing in the earth — all there is of him, you tell me ! If 
you believed he was alive still, and I should find him 
again some day, there would be no reason why you 
should not speak of love even now ; for where does 
any one need love more than at the brink of the grave ? 
But to come talking of love to me, with the same voice 
that has but just been teaching me that the grave is 
the end of all, and my brother gone down into it forever 
— I tell you, cousin — I must say it — it seems to me hardly 
decent. For me at least — I will no^ be loved with the 
love that can calmly accept such a fate. And I will 
never love any man, believing that, if I outlive him, 
my love must thereafter be but a homeless torrent, 
falling ever into a bottomless abyss. Why should I 
make of my heart a roaring furnace of regrets and self 
accusations ? The memory of my brother is for me 
enough. Let me keep what freedom is possible to me ; let 
me rather live the life of a cold-blooded animal, and die 
in the ice that gathers about me. But before I sit down 


658 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


to await such an end, I shall know whether I am indeed 
compelled to believe as you do that there is no God, that 
Death is my lord and master, that he will take me as he 
has taken my brother and yet I shall never see him 
more. No, cousin George, I need a God ; and if there 
be none how did I come to need one.? Yes, I know 
you think you can explain it all, but the way you 
account for it is just as miserable as what you would put 
in its place. lam not complete in myself like you. I 
am not able to live without a God. I will seek him until 
I find him, or drop into the abyss where all question 
and answer ceases. Then in the end I shall be no 
worse than you would have me at the beginning — no, 
it will be nothing so bad, for then I shall not know my 
misery as you would have me know it now. If we are 
creatures of nothing, in spite of all the outcry of our 
souls against that fate, what mighty matter is it if, thus 
utterly befooled of Nature, we should also a little fool 
ourselves, by believing in a lovely hope that looks like 
a promise, and seems as if it ought to be true ? How 
can a devotion to the facts of her existence be required 
of one whose nature has been proved to her a lie ? — 
You speak from the facts of your nature, George ; I 
speak from the facts of mine.” 

Helen had come awake at last ! It would have suited 
George better had she remained a half-quickened 
statue, responsive only to himself, her not over-potent 
Pygmalion. He sat speechless — with his eyes fixed on 
her. 

“You need no God,” she went on, “therefore you 


HELEN AWAKE. 


659 


' seek none. If you need none, you are right to seek 
none, I dare say. But I need a God — oh, I can not tell 
how I need him, if he be to be found ! and by the same 
reasoning I will give my life to the search for him. To 
the last I will go on seeking him, for if once I give 
in, and confess there is no God, I shall go mad — mad, 
and perhaps kill somebody like poor Poldie. George, 

I have said my say. I would not have come into the 
garden but to say it. Good-by.” 

As she spoke she rose and held out her hand to 
him. But in the tumult of more emotions than I can 
well name — amongst the rest indignation, dismay, dis- 
appointment, pride, and chagrin, he lost himself while 
searching in vain for words, paid no heed to her move- 
ment, and lifted no hand to take that she offered. With 
head erect she walked from the summer-house. 

“The love of a life-time ! — a sweet invitation !” she 
said to herself, as with the slow step of restrained 
wrath she went up the garden. 

George sat for some minutes as she had left him. 
Then he brolce the silence in his own ears and said, 

“Well, Tm damned !” 

And so he was— for the time— and a very good thing 
too, for he required it. 


CHAPTER XCVIII. 


THOU DIDST NOT LEAVE. 

HE next day the curate found himself so ill at 
ease, from the reaction after excitement of 
various kinds, that he determined to give 
himself a holiday. His notion of a holiday 
was a very simple one ; a day in a deep wood, if such 
could be had, with a volume fit for alternate reading 
and pocketing as he might feel inclined. Of late no 
volume had been his companion in any wanderings but 
his New Testament. 

There was a remnant of real old-fashioned forest on 
the L5’-the, some distance up : thither he went by the 
load, the shortest way, to return by the winding course 
of the stream. Tt was a beautiful day of St. Martin’s 
summer. In the forest, if the leaves were gone, there 
was the more light, and sun and shadow played many a 
lovely game. But he saw them as though he saw them 
not, for fear and hope struggled in his heart, and for a 
long time prayer itself could not atone them. At 



THOU DIDST NOT LEAVE. 


66 1 


length, a calm fell, and he set out to return home, down 
the bank of the river. 

Many-hued and many-shaped had been the thoughts, 
not that came to him from the forest, but that he had car- 
ried thither with him : through all and each of them, 
ever and again had come dawning the face of Helen, as 
he had seen it in church the day before, where she sat 
between her aunt and her cousin, so unlike either. 
For, to their annoyance, she had insisted on going to 
church, and to hers they had refused to let her go 
alone. And in her face the curate had seen something 
he had never seen there until then, — a wistful look, as 
if now she would be glad to pick up any suitable crumb 
to carry home with her. In that dawn of coming child- 
hood, though he dared not yet altogether believe it 
such, the hard contemptuous expression of Bascombe’s 
countenance, and the severe disapproval in Mrs. Rams- 
horn’s, were entirely lost upon him. 

All the way down the river, the sweet change haunt- 
ed him. When he got into the park, and reached that 
hollow betwixt the steep ferny slopes where he sat on 
the day with which my narrative opens, he seated him- 
self again on the same stone, and reviewed the past 
twelve months. This was much such a day as that, 
only the hour was different : it was the setting sun that 
now shone upon the ferns, and cast shadows from them 
big enough for oaks. What a change had passed upon 
him ! That day the New Testament had been the book 
of the church— this day it was a fountain of living wa- 
ters to the man Thomas Wingfold. He had not 


662 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


opened his Horace for six months. Great trouble he 
had had ; both that and its results were precious. Now 
a new trouble had come, but that also was a form of 
life : he would rather love and suffer and love still, a 
thousand times rather, than return to the poverty of 
not knowing Helen Lingard ; yet a thousand times 
rather would he forget Helen Lingard than lose from 
his heart one word of the Master, whose love was the 
root and only pledge and security of love, the only 
power that could glorify it — could cleanse it from the 
mingled selfishness that wrought for its final decay and 
death. 

The sun was down ere he left the park, and the twi- 
light was rapidly following the sun as he drew near to 
the Abbey on his way home. Suddenly, more like an 
odor than a sound, he heard the organ, he thought. 
Never yet had he heard it on a week-day ; the organist 
was not of those who haunt their instrument. Often 
of late had the curate gazed on that organ as upon a 
rock filled with sweet waters, before which he stood a 
Moses without his rod ; sometimes the solemn instru- 
ment appeared to him a dumb Jeremiah that sat there 
from Sunday to Sunday, all the week long, with his 
head bowed upon his hands, and not a Jebusite to 
listen to him: if only his fingers had been taught the 
craft, he thought how his soul would pour itself out 
through the song-tubes of that tabernacle of sweetness 
and prayer, and on the blast of its utterance ascend to 
the throne of the most high ! Who could it be that 
was now peopling the silence of the vast church with 


THOU DIDST NOT LEAVE. 


663 


melodious sounds, worshipping creatures of the 
elements? If the winds and the flames of fire are his 
angels, how much more the grandly consorting tones 
of the heavenly organ ! He would go and see what 
power informed the vaporous music. 

He entered the church by one of the towers, in which 
a stair led skyward, passing the neighborhood of the 
organ, and having a door to its loft. As he ascended, 
came a pause in the music ; — and then, like the break- 
ing up of a summer cloud in the heavenliest of rain- 
showers, began the prelude to the solo in the Messiah, 
Thou didst 7iot leave his soul in hell. Up still the curate 
crept softly. All at once a rich full contralto voice — 
surely he had heard it before — came floating out on the 
torrent, every tone bearing a word of sorrowful tri- 
umph in its bosom. 

He reached the door. Very gently he opened it, and 
peeped in. But the back of the organ was towards 
him, and he could see nothing. He stepped upon the 
tiles of the little apse. One stride cleared the end of 
the organ, and he saw the lace of the singer ; it was 
Helen Lingard ! 

She started. The music folded its wings and drop- 
ped — like a lark into its nest. But Helen recovered 
herself at once, rose from her ministration at the music- 
altar, and approached the curate. 

“ Have I taken too great a liberty ?” she said, in a 
gentle steady voice. 

” No, surely,” he answered. “ I am sorry I startled 
you. I wish you would wake such sounds oftener.” 


664 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


“ He didn't leave my brother’s soul in hell, did he. 
Mr. Wingfold ?” she said abruptly, and her eyes shone 
through the dusk. 

“ If ever a soul was taken out of hell, it was Leo° 
pold’s,” returned the curate. “ And it lifts mine out of 
it too,” he added, “ to hear you say so.” 

“ I behaved very badly to you. I confess my fault. 
Will you forgive me ?” she said. 

“ I love you too much to be able to forgive you 
that was the word in the curate’s heart, but a different 
found its way to his lips. 

“ My heart is open to you. Miss Lingard,” he said ; 
“ take what forgiveness you think you need. For what 
I can tell, it may be my part to ask forgiveness, not to 
grant it. If I have been harder to you than there was 
need, I pray you to forgive me. Perhaps I did not 
enter enough into your difficulties.” 

“ You never said one word more than was right, or 
harder than I deserved. Alas I I can no more — in this 
world, at least — ask Leopold to forgive me, but I can 
ask you and Mr. Polwarth, who were as the angels of 
God to him, to pardon me for him and for yourselves 
too. I was obstinate and proud and selfish. — Oh, Mr. 
Wingfold, can you, do you really believe that Leopold 
is somewhere ? Is he alive this moment ? Shall I ever 
—ever— I don’t mind if it’s a thousand yeafs first— but 
shall I ever see him again ?” 

“ I do think so. I think the story must be true that 
tells us Jesus took to himself again the body he left on 
the cross and brought it with him out of its grave.” 


THOU DIDST NOT LEAVE. 


66s 


“ Will you take me for a pupil — a disciple — and teach 
me to believe — or hope, if you like that word better — as 
you do ?” said Helen humbly. 

How the heart of the curate beat — like the drum of a 
praising orchestra ! 

“ Dear Miss Lingard,” he answered, very solemnly, “ I 
can teach you nothing ; I can but show you where I 
found what has changed my life from a bleak Novem- 
ber to a sunny June — with its thunder-storms no doubt 
— but still June beside November. Perhaps I could 
help you a little if you were really set out to find Jesus, 
but you must yourself set out. It is you who must find 
him. Words of mine, as the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness, may let you know that one is near who 
thinks he sees him, but it is you who must search, and 
you who must find. If you do search, you will find, 
with or without help of mine. — But it is getting dark. — 
You have the key of the north door, I suppose }'' 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then will you lock the door, and take the key 
to Mrs. Jenkins. I will stay here a while, and then 
follow you home, if you will allow me, where we can 
have a little talk together. Ah, what an anthem the 
silent organ will play for me !” 

Helen turned and went down into the church, and 
thence home. 

The curate remained with the organ. It was silent, 
and so were his lips, but his heart — the music was not 
latent there, for his praise and thanksgiving ascended, 
without voice or instrument, essential harmony, to the 


666 


THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE. 


ear that hears thought, and the heart that vibrates to 
every chord of feeling in the hearts it has created. 
Ah ! what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts 
are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace ? 
Alone in the dusky church, the curate’s ascended like a 
song of the angels, for his heart was all a thanksgiving 
— not for any perfected gift, but for many a lovely hope. 
He knelt down by the organ and worshipped the God 
and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ— that God and no 
other was the God of his expectation. When he rose 
from his knees, the church was dark, but through the 
windows of the clerestory many stars were shining. 


THE END. 















